The Wicket Gate
by Nightfall Rising
Summary: Severus's fifth year wasn't so much one long nightmare as one of those tooth-rattling, upside-down rollercoasters that looks, to your friends on the ground, at least as horrifying as it feels. CH 11: Slughorn thinks he'd, er, better have a quick word with the boys about how politics work in academia. You know, *before* next year's prefect badges go out. (DUCK!)
1. March

**Disclaimer:** Profitless fanwork.

**Warnings: **I don't think this _quite_ rates an M. I'd call it R if that were a choice. So warnings for m/m (emotion-porn, not graphic sex), and involuntary temporary body-modification, and generally... you know, the MWPP fifth year.

**Credits:** Characters and setting by J.K. Rowling. Beta and britpicking by _wanderinginthoughtspace_ (thank yooooouuuuuu). Errors by my stubbornness. Title and opening quote by Paul Bunyan.

**Series info:** see profile. BUT: this isn't really a standalone story. It's the second half of A Key Called Promise, separated because the tone is darker and the rating is higher and people should be able to read a story through even if they just want the kidfic. I have no idea whether Wicket Gate will make any sense without the Key (see what I did there? ;D), but that's certainly where all the nickname explanations and Evan's character development are.

**Art** will be posted in the crossposted chapters at Archive of Our Own. Links will be in my profile. There was at least one per chapter in Key, and I hope to keep that up. Requests are welcome; no specific promises, but I usually do the ones that inspire me.

**Shameless begging**  
Please, please review. Not only does it keep me motivated to post (seriously, exposing my baby to the world is often much harder than writing, and takes emotional energy I don't always have), but telling me what you like may pay off. I don't finish fine-tuning my stories until they're posted, and sometimes not even then. You might also inspire art. Or DVD extras.

**Canon Compliance**  
It is advised that the reader be familiar with the biography of Harry Potter written by Ms. Rowling. The reader should be aware that this excellent and illuminating seven-volume series was fact-checked by Ms. Skeeter rather than Miss Granger. It therefore cannot be relied on in the matter of dates. Furthermore, Ms. Rowling's books are written from the point of view of their subject, and not only contain a distinctly pro-Gryffindor bias but largely confine themselves to what Mr. Potter saw, heard, assumed, and speculated, rather than strictly adhering to historical fact.

_This_ is a Slytherin story, and truth is subjective.

* * *

_Wherefore Christian was left to tumble in the Slough of Despond alone: but still he endeavoured to struggle to that side of the slough that was still further from his own house, and next to the wicket-gate; the which he did, but could not get out, because of the burden that was upon his back: but I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name was Help, and asked him, What he did there?  
—The Pilgrim's Progress_

* * *

The last half of '75 had been kind to Evan and left Narcissa full-stop stunning. She looked like she ought to be painted in a blue dress by a water lily pond, holding a lace parasol. Wilkes had gone oddly gawky for someone as short as she was, but the way she moved made it decidedly appealing, made her fawnlike with her big, butterbeer-colored eyes. Narcissa's other roommates were curvier than they'd been, but not less giggly (quite the reverse), and Evan still had little time for them.

Avery had gotten beefier, and Evan wondered until if he was going to get transferred to Beater. Gamp did try, but Avery just could not aim with a bat. Lockhart had gotten improbably prettier and also smoother, but remained very much himself.

Severus, Mulciber, and Regulus were all in awkward stages. Mulciber's new clumsiness came off a bit threatening, like one of Kettleburn's large monsters that might tread on you, and you'd never know whether it had been an accident or for fun. The word his elbows made one think of was rawboned.

Of the other two, Reggie was probably luckier. He'd only got spotty, and that had been reparable. Severus had only laughed at Reggie's hair (grown out because Reggie had seen Severus hide behind his own often enough) for a minute or two before fixing him up a topical. It had made Reggie greatly relieved and, shortly thereafter, less shaggy.

It had also made a startled Severus unusually solvent when people found out where Reg had gotten the potion from. He still didn't buy himself anything new, but was not above overcharging Lockhart. Or failing to correct his impression that half a jar was an appropriate dose for one spot that did not actually exist.

Severus had not gotten spottier (he had gotten swottier, but he did that every time he had a chance to read anything he wanted without homework getting in the way). The Gryffindor thugs, who when called marauding goons by Evans had decided they liked the name, were sure he'd made a deal with the devil about it.

Evan was bemused about this. They were all in close enough combat with him often enough to know perfectly well that he didn't smell unwashed, which was the assumption at the center of their contention.

What he had gotten, along with some height, was more than his fair share of knee, elbow, and adam's apple to keep his nose company. This all would probably have been less glaring if he didn't keep forgetting to eat in the middle of meals, or skipping them altogether when the Gryffie jackasses were being particularly awful or Evans especially difficult.

He was, at least, more aware of where all his bits were than many who shared his fate. Although he struck the eye as clumsy, he really wasn't. Reggie and Mulciber and Thor Rowle were all a lot more likely to knock things over than he was. Lestrange, conversely, was starting to move like Bella. People were getting the impression he was her brother rather than her husband's.

Spike had sensibly spent his winter hols in the castle for once, apparently enjoying some kind of a wary and swottish and possibly handsy truce with Lupin and not getting any new bones broken. Everyone else in their year had gone home, and Evan wished he hadn't.

Andi had been stupid enough to think that her father might un-disinherit her just because her daughter had turned out not only to be definitely a witch but also almost uniquely talented. Aunt Dru and even a few of the born-Blacks, like Grandfather and Uncle Alf, had already been quietly ignoring Uncle Cygnus's decision, but Andi had made it _so much harder_ for everyone by trying to be reinstated formally. Christmas had been completely unbearable, with Uncle Alf and Aunt Lucy making snide comments at everyone and Sirius alternately being surly and actually shouting, and Bella and Aunt Walburga and Uncle Cygnus all shouting back, which just made him get _louder_...

Narcissa had stuck around to support her mum and keep an eye on things, and Ev had put in a pair of earplugs and gotten a lot of practice at sketching angry gestures and hexes—which had annoyed everyone, but they were annoying _him, _so that was only fair. Reggie and Grandfather had kept disappearing together for long walks and Salazar-knew-what in Grandfather's study, and Uncle Orion had spent the holiday in a tranquil alcoholic haze.

Mum and Dad, the rats, were off in Greece with some French aquamancer and the sunken ship he'd found. It was completely unfair. Quite apart from all the histrionics they were avoiding, why didn't Evan get to go learn to paint underwater? He could learn Mermish and do scenes of the village in the lake!

All told, the holiday was exceedingly vexing and tedious. Getting back to the castle's cool and comparatively quiet halls was a great relief.

More than that, something subtle and promising had happened to Severus's voice. Evan couldn't pin it down, but it made him think of warm, slow, shaded rivers, with riptides. Probably it had been happening for a while and familiarity had kept them all from noticing, but it was A Serious Thing. It was a Thing that was Serious Enough To Make Some People Overlook The Awkward.

He'd had Wilkes at 'Hullo, Wilkes, fine, thanks, how were yours,' and now she was stalking him. Avery had started casually whipping it out when Severus and Mulciber were having an argument. Evan would rather have liked to discourage that, preferably vehemently, but it did invariably break things up. Besides, he could understand the impulse.

Almost everyone in the years above and below them seemed largely unaffected; Severus wasn't chatty outside of the dungeons and class—was, in fact, uninvitingly taciturn and narrow-eyed. Still, a few of the people he had classes with had been sending him scurrying for haven by eying him appraisingly or even, horrors, giggling to each other while glancing at him.

Evan pretended not to find this hilarious, because he quite liked being considered haven and didn't fancy mucking that up for himself. Besides, it would be unkind and hypocritical. Nobody who was shamelessly coaxing Severus into reading out his History notes aloud (on the flimsy pretext that the lecture part of class must be valuable or they wouldn't have to sit through it; it wasn't as though Evan _wanted_ to be susceptible to the soporific that was Binns, Spike!) should laugh at equally perceptive people with fewer opportunities.

Narcissa was unaffected, but she was being intently courted by five crazy-eyed contenders, to three of whom she was giving moderately serious consideration. Severus didn't seem to react that way to her, either. He noticed and remarked on it when she'd put in an extra effort or was otherwise looking especially nice, but Evan suspected that this was at least 99.5% because she'd trained him well and strictly, using methods Evan hoped to never find out about.

The Voice Thing drove Sirius up a wall, through the ceiling, and over the castle gates. Potter, too, for more obvious reasons. Lupin looked wistful and haunted and conflicted, and had a tendency to look hesitatingly at Evan during prefect meetings as though he wanted to ask him something. Pettigrew had been known to walk into doors, probably out of spine-tingling terror. Evan didn't pretend not to find any of _them_ smirk-worthy, the bastards.

Proving that Potter's spite was never based in reality, Evans hadn't even noticed. It made Ev want to shake her until her (admittedly glorious) Titian hair fell out.

He personally had noticed that Severus was finally starting to grow into his face.

Severus himself, being what he called a realist and everybody else called a cynical, paranoid, maniacal depressive, mostly noticed the other things. "As soon as we're done with school ties," he said, emerging from the bathroom with a sigh, "I'm switching to cravats. I don't care how Edwardian it is."

"Not that I object to how much I could get away with if you habitually wore high collars," Evan mused, "but you could probably achieve a similar effect with less effort by coming to a saner appreciation of cake."

Severus made an _eh_ noise and sighed at his cloak. It had developed a loud yellow and red polka-dot pattern on the way back from breakfast, which was innocuous enough to have been a Sirius whim rather than a serious expression of grudge by Potter. A simple finite hadn't budged the coloring, though, so Severus set resignedly to the business of working down the list of clothing magic Narcissa had taught him.

"I saw you at breakfast," Evan pursued the matter, crossing his ankles and leaning back against laced fingers behind his head. "You know what happens when you get all absorbed in… what were you reading, anyway?"

"Pre-wand technique," Severus said, wand-tossing him a battered book called _Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes_. "Mam's birthday's coming up; I wanted to send her some things she could do without… without getting into trouble. She scolds if I buy her anything, so."

Evan decided to avoid that one by as many leagues as possible. "All right, when you get all absorbed in books so old their authors' tombstones have crumbled to dust?"

"You should read it, Ev. There's a whole chapter on candles and colored flame, and another one on how the rays of different sources of light can be magically imbued when they pass through colored crystal."

"All right, I will, but you know what happens?"

"You learn things?"

"Your plate goes back with half your food on it, Brilliant, and the kitchen elves think they've done something wrong. You're making poor, defenseless, well-meaning elves iron their ears, Spike."

"I'm not making anyone do anything, Nonsense," Severus said with an eyebrow up. He'd finally gotten his cloak in order, and settled down next to Evan with an arm around his back.

Evan returned the arm-drapery and gave Severus a friendly nuzzle, letting the heady, homelike smell of whatever it was Severus washed with settle and focus him. "Want to attack this with me?" he asked gesturing to the open workbook in front of him. "Go twice as fast with two; we might even get through Runes before lunch."

They lost themselves quickly in the arrays Digitalin had set them for Monday. Next year they'd get to start directing their own research in his class, and they were both looking forward to it. Severus had some arcane theory about runes and arrays in wandwork and numerology in potion-stirring patterns, and Evan couldn't wait to start applying arithmancy to composition.

Although... Severus had told him about the muggles' science breaking down color into things called wavelengths that had frequency, like sound, and were therefore made of numbers. If so, the actual colors on a canvas should have at least as much magical potential as their arrangement, yes?

Choices, choices. Next year was going to be fun, no matter how much work it was.

After a while, Mulciber, Wilkes, Narcissa, and all their books joined them. The common room must have been getting noisy.

They'd all been working peacefully for maybe twenty minutes when the common room got _so_ noisy that everyone looked at the door. Then everyone but Severus turned back to their work. "I'm sure they gave you those badges for a reason," he said to Evan and Narcissa, shaking his head as he stood. "There's six of you, for pity's sake."

"Yes, darling," Narcissa agreed absently, turning a page of her Transfigurations textbook. "It's because you need someone to play Good Auror."

"Wrath of Merlin Auror; _I'm_ Good Auror," Severus retorted incorrectly, and went out to deal with it. Evan stopped the door closing, because Spike yelling at people for yelling at people never failed to make him grin.

Snatches of it drifted back to them, like, "…Not even _Gryffindor_ behavior, you're acting like juvenile _warthogs_," and, "I hope to every god ever spawned by the brain of man you aren't thinking of expressing those views in public; Slughorn will completely wash his hands of you," and, "Oh, well, if it's _authority_ you want, I should be _delighted_ to go disturb one of the prefects from their NEWT studies. I'm sure they'll be _thrilled_ to drop everything to come and adjudicate for a bunch of spoiled brats with the self control of jarveys—no? Well, it's me, one of them, or sort it out yourselves QUIETLY, which you have just proved is well beyond your illustrious talents, your majesty, so…"

"We're only doing OWL studies," Evan mentioned when he came back, smiling at him. "The senior prefects are all in the library."

"NEWT studies sounds more impressive," Severus said with an airy flick of his long fingers. "They're second-years, they're flustered, it'll take them all week to work it out and by then they'll have forgotten."

"You didn't leave them hanging from the ceiling like flies again, did you?" Narcissa asked, frowning a little. "That took a little explaining."

"No, they settled down quickly enough this time," Severus assured her. "No one tried to hex me. I told you doing it once would mean I'd only have to do it once."

"What was it?" Mulciber asked. He didn't sound particularly curious, but it was always a good idea to keep half an eye on spats even in the lower forms. Those had a smaller initial blast potential, but more time to mature.

They didn't usually just go away, either. To nip a Slytherin feud in the bud, you needed as strange and unlikely a combination as the blithe self-assurance that kept Narcissa from bothering to hold grudges and Spike's skinless tendency to mirror back how other people felt about him.

It was an alarmingly accurate ability/curse of Spike's, second by second, although pushy people like Wilkes could close him off. If his mercurial cousin's hateful best friend didn't think Spike wanted 'his girl,' Evan often thought, Sirius's inability to hold a mood on his own for ten minutes would have flown Spike around the twist in a much less harmful way. Maybe even a fun one.

Then again, if Sirius hadn't had an attention span problem and been taught how to think and have fun by his mother and Bella, Potter wouldn't be out looking for Pettigrew-saving ways to entertain him all the time. Some combinations were just bad news.

Evan combined with Spike's Quidditch uniform, for example. But he was getting used to that. Sort of. Slowly. He hadn't lost his temper this year. Even though Spike technically staying on the reserve team only really meant they had four Chasers on a rotation and Gamp had three people to bribe every time he wanted Spike to play: Spike to fly (1), someone else not to (2), and Evan to take a mild soother with breakfast (3).

* * *

1) This was a racket; you couldn't have kept Spike out of Evan and Reggie's games with a body-bind.

2) Less of a racket, depending on who it was and how much homework they had.

3) To keep him from racking up fouls grabbing Sirius's bat and beating Pettigrew to death with it. Or some other Beater's bat with which to beat Pettigrew and Potter to death in the stands, if it wasn't a Gryffindor game. Not a racket. He really, _really_ wanted to.

* * *

"I gather," Severus said judiciously, "the catalyst had to do with earrings that were borrowed without permission. But it seems to boil down to something Higgs heard Jorkins tell Parkinson."

"Oh, the Goyle mess," laughed Wilkes.

"Not good if the baby snakes are taking sides," Evan mused. "That's a seventh-year matter, none of their business. None of our business, strictly speaking."

"And yet," Severus grimaced.

"I'll have a word with Davis about Parkinson, darling," Narcissa told Ev, "but I think we may have to set the cobra on Jorkins as soon as possible. The poor thing just can't take a hint."

"I'm not your attack dog," Severus grumbled.

Everybody laughed at him. "You're our guard dog, Naj," Evan re-interpreted, giving him a squeeze. "Against unruly and slipshod habits in the peabrains who are our future."

"_Fine,_" he sighed, put-upon. "It's surely not possible I had anything else to do."

"Do you have something else to do?" Evan asked. He was a little disappointed, although strictly speaking he'd had nothing to be appointed about. He did have an open day, though, no practice or dates planned. He was where he ought to be in his homework, and although he was allowed to do watercolors unsupervised now and had a painting of the lake in progress, it would have been nice if Severus had been similarly free.

Seeming to read this thought in his tone, Severus turned to him with an arrested quality to his lack of expression. "Well," he started. "Nothing—that is…"

"Ooh, he _does!" _Wilkes exclaimed. "Who, who, who? Inquiring minds want to grill them afterwards. I mean fantasize. I mean know."

"Oh, _really,_" Severus said crossly, scowling. He crossed his arms, too. "We're not all you, Wilkes. Chang wants me to go over her elemental-versus-planetary properties of plants essay with her, that's all."

The rest of them all looked up, and looked at him, and looked at each other.

Severus successfully fended off three of the four pillows, but Narcissa's got him in the face. "What?!" he demanded, aggrieved.

"Severus, darling," Narcissa told him patiently, "Mingyue does _not_ want you to go over her potions essay with her."

"She asked me to," Severus returned, more slowly and less patiently.

"Because that's what she thought you'd agree to without running away, nimrod," Wilkes said, rolling her pretty eyes hugely. "_Nobody_ wants you to go over their essays with them, Naj. _Nobody_."

"It's an essay a lot of people have trouble with. And she grew up with the air-fire-water-iron-wood system, she doesn't think in Aristotelian—"

"That's as may be," Evan cut him off, "but your edits make sixth years cry. And everybody knows it. And she certainly knows it, because she has Potions and Runes with Reggie."

"My edits do not make Reggie cry," he said, offended.

"Only because he grew up with Auntie Walburga, Severus," Narcissa told him, trying to contain her smile. "He's like someone who's been tortured for years and barely feels the lash anymore even when it makes him bleed."

"Kinky," commented Wilkes, eying her speculatively.

"I like Chang," Evan mentioned. "She's loony, but it's a nice kind of loony. You should be friends with her, Spike, you need more pleasant and peaceful in your life."

Severus eyed Evan like he wanted to say something scathing but might not have even if they were alone. Evan blinked at him. It was good advice, he'd thought.

"Anyway," said Wilkes, standing up and coming over to straddle Severus, "what she _wants_ is—"

"Get off me."

"I could get off on you," she said hopefully, pressing up against his chest and winding her arms around his neck.

He wordlessly lifted her off him. Apparently without magic, too. This, although she'd been dubbed the Ribbon Snake for being tiny as well as because of her proven ability to eat toads and Slugs for breakfast, gave Evan the sudden urge to bite his arms.

"You could get off on me," Mulciber offered generously.

"You can watch," she decided, equally generously, and slid onto Narcissa's lap instead. Narcissa looked startled. "Now, what she wants, Naj—are you paying attention?" Everyone was paying attention, because she was twined most artistically around her roommate, lips behind her ear and a hand sneaking into her robes. Evan plastered a hand over his eyes. "She wants you to turn down the lights..." Wilkes purred into Narcissa's hair, "and whisper pretty things in her ear... and then... _doooo_ them!"

"What kind of things?" Mulciber asked in a tell-me-a-story voice. Evan whimpered. Did it _have_ to be his cousin? Couldn't she have picked on Mulciber instead? He could have dealt with looking at Mulciber.

"Wilkes," said Severus, in such a restricted voice that Ev couldn't tell whether he was displeased or trying not to laugh. "I think you're killing Lance."

"Things like this," Wilkes said, still purring.

There was a rustling and a wet noise, and then Narcissa squeaked and stood up. "Lucy," she said severely, "this is terribly undignified."

"Oh, I suppose you're right," Wilkes agreed, not chastised. "Bye, boys! Don't forget to use your assets, Naj!" Evan looked up just in time to see her tap the bridge of her pert little nose with a meaningful expression and steer a trying-to-look-unflustered Narcissa out. Severus flushed.

"What?" Mulciber asked, perplexed.

Severus slouched completely behind his book and hissed out a fervent, "_Nothing_. It means _nothing_. She's just _odd_."

"Not the word I would have used," Mulciber said. It would have been a leer if he'd been Avery, so thank Salazar Avery was out. "What do you think they're doing now?"

"I'm sure my first cousin and her friend are sedately studying transfiguration," Evan said firmly.

"More like charms," Mulciber said, and now it was a leer. Severus made a _rrrgh_ noise, scowling into the book, and Mulciber rolled his eyes at them. "All right, let's say it's Wilkes and Cattermole, then."

"Oh, all right," Evan said, happier with this idea.

"Your mothers gave birth to you, you know," Severus said snappishly.

"Er… so?"

He looked up, annoyed. "So intercourse has been happening since at least nine months before you were born."

"_Spike!" _Evan howled, along with Mulciber's equally horrified, "_Snape!"_

"Honestly!" Severus went on impatiently. "You lot act like you've just discovered genitalia for the first time in the history of the universe and if the topic isn't thoroughly explored by tomorrow the sun won't come up. A meritorious subject to be sure," he went on droll with a distinct hint of patronizing, "but there _are_ others."

Evan and Mulciber looked at each other. "Surely none so worthy, Spike," Evan said, blinking at him.

Severus put down his quill and stood up with his bookbag, shaking his head. "I'm going to go talk potions with a Ravenclaw now," he announced, and strode off.

"Try not to run into the goon squad!" Evan called after him.

"I always try!"

Evan nodded agreeably along with Mulciber's progressively lascivious contemplation of Chang's lushly compact exoticism and how it might swell over the next year or two. He couldn't really get into it, though. His side was cold, which was distracting. Besides, while Chang was pretty and he enjoyed talking to her, she was too laid-back for Evan to imagine making any sparks with. _Somebody_ in a clinch ought to have some fizz.

Mulciber was definitely into it, though. Before long, he was rubbing himself and giving Ev an invitational eyebrow.

Evan thought about it. Mulciber had more visual (if less sensual) appeal than Severus, and if he and his turn of phrase were a bit more edged than Evan preferred, he was quite good at applying charms in interesting ways that many including Evan wouldn't have thought of (and Severus and Narcissa wouldn't have admitted to thinking of).

On the other hand…

He shook his head, and started stowing his books away. "Another time," he said, not without regret. "I want to get down to the lake before the light gets too noonlike. Can't rely on there still being any peace tomorrow morning."

"Suit yourself," said Mulciber with a shrug, and disappeared into his bed. He had a much more tolerable voice than their fourth roommate, and used a quite nice sandalwood and cedar soap. For a moment, Evan almost reconsidered. By that time he had his pad out, though, and looking at his half-finished painting made him want to get back to it.

He was almost happy with the water by the time a pair of hands slid onto his shoulders. Oak-leaves, sage, basil, juniper, hints of dark mint and spices, vervain, mmm... Without needing to look, he leaned back and let his eyes drift shut. "I could brew you something in almost any of those shades," Severus said, mellow, "but put them together?"

"I could probably teach you," Evan said. Severus was wearing a jumper he'd had since first year, so often altered (mostly by Narcissa) that it wasn't recognizable anymore. It had obviously been someone else's before it was his, and now it was so much enlarged and often-worn that it couldn't have been very warm. Severus was warm, though, and the jumper was soft against Ev's cheek. It was a very different kind of soft from any of the high-quality knits and fabrics someone like Evan Rosier would have encountered without strange friends to turn his life in odd directions.

"No, you couldn't," Severus said. Evan could hear the smile in his voice. "You can't fool me, Rosier. Your da had you copying shapes and shadows the same year Mam started me stirring the stew and chopping vegetables."

"Probably," he allowed, also smiling. "Maybe I couldn't get you professional, but I could still teach you."

"I'll just let you stay my eyes, thanks. We have OWLs to study for, after all, and next year will be just as bad."

"True. Speaking of work, I don't suppose you've sorted out Jorkins yet."

Severus's stomach tightened with his quiet snort. "I wouldn't hold out much hope in that quarter," he said. "But, no, I'm not going to try until you and Narcissa have had a word with the upper-form prefects. She's sure to complain about me to them, so we all need to be on the same page before I move."

Evan nodded. With a smile, he teased, "How was Chang?"

"She _is_ well, kind of you to ask," Severus said. Evan could hear the eye-roll. "For god's sake, Ev, she's fourteen."

"I'm fifteen," Ev pointed out.

"Only for about a month. And you're…"

Evan waited curiously. After a while he got a little distracted by the warm and _mmmm_ and started nosing into Spike's jumper. Spike wasn't carrying much in the way of nonessential weight, and Quidditch and having Gryffindor enemies were both full-body workouts, but he did a lot more walking and brewing than heavy lifting. Ev tended to think of Spike as, well, all spikes and wiry angles, even if some of them were made of brittle obsidian rather than steel. But here was this soft place at his core. Evan pressed in peacefully, plotting naps and maybe other things.

"All over everybody without prompting," Severus finished, only just not-laughing at him.

"All right, all right." He'd acknowledge the mockery, but it wasn't a good reason to move his face. He was comfortable. "Did you get her essay sorted?"

"More or less. I told her to do the damn essay Slughorn wants and put all her complaints and alternate perspectives in the footnotes."

"That's what you do, is it?" He reached up to squeeze one of Spike's hands.

"I give him a separate parchment with the endnotes, he calculates the extra credit based on volume, reading only carefully enough to make sure I'm not giving him fiction, everyone's happy."

"Except that it makes you crazy."

"No effort there, ask anyone."

"Don't need to ask," Evan chuckled.

Severus made an offended noise, and they lapsed into silence again. Evan thought it was nice, after peering at the sun on the lake for so long, to tip his head back into warmth and gaze up at the harsh, icy blue of the March sky. After a while, Spike said, "Chang says Slughorn's asked her grandmother if she'll help me learn to pronounce the Chinese runes properly over the summer."

"That's wonderful, Spike."

There was a long sigh. "It is," he agreed. "I just don't know how I'm going to get there and back. It's not like I have a broom, or we're on the Floo. If it were next year, maybe I could apparate, but…"

"Well, when you're thanking Sluggy, ask him in a very impressed tone of voice how he's solved the problem. Then he'll have to take care of it, to save face. He'll probably get you a portkey. Just try not to sound sarcastic."

"I'll try. I'm going to make an idiot out of myself, though," he said gloomily. "I can barely manage _British_ manners."

"So ask Chang what her grandmother will expect," Evan said, "and tell the lady in advance you hope for her instruction when your ignorance offends."

Severus shook his head, and his hands tightened on Evan's shoulders. "Everything's just easy to you, isn't it," he said, and bent down over him for a tight hug, close and dizzying. Ev could feel the smile at his temple.

"Worrying about problems gets in the way of solving them sometimes," he said, and turned his face up for a kiss. "I usually find if you assume there's an answer in front of you, there is."

"You Alexander, you," Severus said lightly. "No knot is safe."

"This is one of those references Malfoy would understand, isn't it."

"Mm."

Evan pulled back to look at him, maybe get a new angle for another kiss. His lips pursed and his eyebrow went up. "Spike, why do you have pointed ears?"

"Because Evans watches the same, er." He looked at the mountains, seeking word help. "The same plays me Da does, and decided she was too upset to use her words."

"Oh, for—"

"I think it suits me," Severus said, turning his nose up. "Chang thinks so, too."

Evan had to admit it did, when he used an artist's eye instead of a _my friend has just had involuntary nonconsensual body modification from someone who claims to be his friend again_ eye. The long sweep of the ears balanced out his nose and emphasized his cheekbones, made him fey. "But why?" he asked. He could feel his eyebrows in odd positions, but _really_. "I mean, why?"

Another sigh. "The usual. Avery's been picking on one of her friends, I can't stop him."

"_I_ can't stop him," Evan pointed out, his lips pursed. "Narcissa can't stop him. _Wilkes_ can't stop him. He has no thoughts to affect. He makes no plans. Want, slobber, grab. Dislike, clobber, clobber more."

"As I could attest if that were in any way a good idea," Severus agreed ruefully. "She thinks in straight lines. She thinks loudly telling people you disapprove is always the right thing to do and solves everything, and she thinks not yelling at him means I like him."

"As opposed to meaning his mother wouldn't actually have to speak an order out loud or use up a favor to have your whole family killed."

"Right."

"You did lend her that copy of _Nature's Nobility _when I told you to?"

"Yes, but she thought it was a sort of breeding record. Like for racehorses."

"And you explained that it is, in actual fact, a survival guide?"

"She's surrounded by Gryffindor purebloods who like her and want her to be comfortable, Ev. They keep telling her blood doesn't mean anything."

"They haven't told her money and connections don't mean anything, surely."

"No, they haven't, Evan, because they are actually purebloods and they don't have the Malfoy inferiority complex and they therefore don't name-drop or talk about money. And Evans's family is also very firmly in the category of muggles who convince themselves, or at least their kids, that those things don't matter and everyone's got an equal chance in the world, and Evans likes to think the best of life and doesn't understand lying or delicate omissions or unwritten rules very well."

"So she thought _you_ were lying."

"She thinks I've been gulled by the sadly wrong opinions of snobs who take yourselves too seriously."

"You. You've been gulled."

Severus shrugged. "I haven't convinced her, so I must be wrong. You're all Slytherins, after all, very persuasive."

"_You're_ Slytherin!"

"No, I'm the boy who grew up near her summer house. Anyway, I'm obviously bad at it."

Evan made a disgusted noise. Cobras were still serpents. So were rattlesnakes. And fire-breathing dragons that might crush a house by sitting on it for a quiet smoke. Even if they did wear silly hats and twinkle a lot and guzzle sweets like they were two and convince everyone they were lions. "Stupid bint."

"Don't."

Evan sighed too. "What does Avery have to do with pointy ears?"

"They're very specialized muggle shorthand for I'm heartless and have no feelings."

"…I really can't call her a stupid bint again?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Severus said, fighting a smile. "But I was thinking, could you do me a charcoal portrait like this to send home before I have them fixed? No magic. With very straight eyebrows. Against the mountains, maybe. Da might actually enjoy it, and the shock would probably kill him. Either way, a good result."

"All right," Evan said agreeably. "But I'll have to map them first, Spike. You know, get a really good sense for the weight and the depth and all that…" He smiled up at him, with teeth.

"Think Mulciber's got bored with himself and gone off yet?" Severus asked, with a quite good impression of nonchalance. "There's about an hour till lunch."

"Let's find out," Evan said, tapping his easel with his wand and standing up. His stool and supplies cleaned and folded themselves up and tucked themselves away meekly in their wooden case. "How are you and Narcissa coming on that area silencing charm?"

"We've gotten it to work in the common room, but the wards on the bedroom are being difficult. _Hogwarts: A History_ isn't very specific, so…"

Who knew? There might even be time to finish that array set after all.

* * *

Art at AO3; link in profile:  
_Your mum has had SEX!_

_Everything's just easy to you, isn't it?_

_Heartless  
or: Evan has kind eyes  
or: Unaccountably did not go over well with square, homophobic Tobias  
_

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**Next**: Mulciber's brain + Severus's alcohol + Sirius Black + full moon = [solve for X]


	2. April 14

**Summary**: Alcohol + Sirius Black + full moon = [solve for X]

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**Warnings** for language, alcohol, Spin the Bottle, and things the narrator doesn't understand but you, who have read PoA, do.

**A note: **I have decided that Flitwick is Jewish for the purposes of this c/h/a/p/t/e/r story. Why? Because it's as credible that he has goblin ancestry as dwarfism, and the parallels between JKR's goblins and the way Jews were treated in England for centuries is just, it's not even so subtle as to be glaring, it's so, I mean, seriously, just... if, like me, you can't stomach Merchant of Venice, go watch the BBC Ivanhoe. Go.

Plus, the full moon in April of '76 was on a school night. Therefore the plot required _somebody_ on the staff to have a reason to know in advance they'd be taking the next day off so some students could plan to sleep in. No reason not to use an OC teacher (or a fill in the blank like Vector), but I can't be alone in feeling the sweet-humored, sometimes-bearded, deceptively BAMF head of the Geek House would be an ornament to any seder.

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The eve of Flitwick's religious holiday fell on a Wednesday that spring. It moved around. Since he always took the first day of it off (there were several days, apparently), this caused a lot of complaining when it fell on a weekend, or just on a day when one's year didn't have Charms.

Spike told everyone, with an odd smile, that it was entirely appropriate for it to flee from year to year. This made Reggie's yearmate, Rebecca Goldstein, laugh, and everyone else stare blankly. He also said, more briskly, that quite a lot of people in the world used lunar calendars for religion so they ought to get used to the idea.

Regardless, that year Evan's class was going to have a free morning on the 15th. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw weren't. He had a feeling he'd be seeing a lot of them anyway the evening before: Mulciber had had a brainwave.

They'd been in their room near the end of March, Evan and Mulciber playing go, Avery cleaning his teeth, and Severus bottling alcohol and doing accounts. He'd shaken his head at his records, diverted a few drops of vodka into his mouth, and said meditatively, "No, still disgusting."

"Whaa?" Avery called from the bathroom.

"I don't know why the vodka sells," Severus called back.

"S'strong!" Avery gurgled.

"I know, but it doesn't taste of anything. Just alcohol."

"It's easy to make it taste like other things," Mulciber had said, frowning at the board, then looked up and grinned at Spike. "We should do a contest."

Narcissa had cleared it with Slughorn the next day, because he wasn't good at telling her no and usually didn't want to anyway. Sprout had also been perfectly willing to cooperate, once assured they had their Head's permission and no one under fourteen would be allowed. She only wanted to make sure that nobody tried to harvest any of her plants themselves. Aside from concerns about the plants' welfare, she said there were some students even in the upper forms who couldn't be trusted to know what was poisonous. Or not to think Venomous Tentacula flavored vodka was a brilliant idea.

The kitchen elves, of course, could be counted on to give anyone whatever they wanted without question. Reggie had wanted to fill them in anyway, just to be polite. Narcissa had reminded him that Slughorn's permission was not Dumbledore's permission and many of the elves were chattier than Sprout. As were all of the portraits in the kitchen.

Severus had been under the impression that, since in a _wine_ tasting you weren't supposed to swallow, he didn't have to provide Soberall or Hangunder. Fortunately, Evan had realized this early enough on and called him adorable. There had been a massive sulk, of course, but the situation had been remedied in time.

The sulk had probably been exaggerated for effect. Ev was in harmony with this scam, and quite enjoyed hauling him out of it.

These details attended to, the fourth year and up in every House had gotten two pint bottles and a rules-and-instructions sheet that Saturday. Absolutely everyone, but only after Narcissa had sent tiny birds to fly musically around Spike's head until he realized it was give up or run mad. Gryffindor had nearly been left out entirely, on the premise that Evans was going to yell at him and refuse to participate and her housemates would not play nicely.

Narcissa was adamant, and Evan agreed with her. Once Spike had given in, it had been pointed out to him that the so-called Marauders were calling themselves _marauders_ and would surely play even less nicely if they weren't included. He had pointed out in return that explaining their reasoning to him might have gotten them what they wanted faster.

This was true, of course, but Narcissa lived in hope of training him to feel instinctively that she was always right. Evan thought she was barking up the wrong implacable waterfall. It was excellent entertainment: he wouldn't have interfered for worlds.

Wednesday night was the Great Tasting, and it was going, Evan thought in a slow and happy way, very well.

Potter and Evans had both stayed away, Potter stating baldly that while he understood his friends' sad susceptibility to the lure of the Demon Alcohol (nick him some, mates, would they?), someone had to stay behind to rescue everyone the snakes poisoned. Spike had very nearly cheered at this news.

Evans wasn't even boycotting to be horrible. She'd even worked with her roommates on their entry, just told Spike apologetically that she had a feeling it was going to be too rowdy for her. This obviously meant she didn't want to be anywhere near Avery or Mulciber, especially when they were drunk. Probably the preference extended to their entire House. It had been unusually tactful of her not to say so outright.

Lupin was sick (again), which Evan thought was a shame. He would have quite liked to see how a drunk Lupin acted around Spike. Sirius and Pettigrew had come, although Pettigrew's appearance had been the definition of token. He'd just tasted everything quickly, made his votes, hovered unhappily around Sirius for a few excruciatingly awkward minutes, and scampered.

Away from all the bad influences in his life, Sirius was so much more the cousin Evan remembered, less his mother's son than Potter made him. He was relaxed and joking with everyone, working the refilling charms on the samples hard. After some initial conflicted wariness, Reg had plastered himself to his side and was generally looking like three Christmases had come all at once.

Annoyed, Narcissa had suggested that Evan ought to join her in being upset that their cousin's presence had turned their friend into a wallflower at his own event. This would have been a reasonable point if any turning had been required. Or if Severus hadn't been looking on, quite relaxed, with a not unkind but definitely unholy amused look of mild blackmail in his eyes.

The original plan had been for Narcissa to announce the three winners, but they were Slytherin. Getting the most advantage and goodwill out of developing situations was what they did—well, not Spike, but he knew his shortcomings and took instruction willingly enough. Therefore, the job went to Reggie, with his brother providing commentary that wouldn't have been nearly as funny if they were all sober. Evan could tell this from Spike's slightly pained expression. Not being in the least sober himself, he took it on faith—and laughed anyway.

Severus only spoke up at the end. "The winners and runners-up will be available," he said, "and a bottle of your choice to everyone in a winning team. Even though none of you has any taste and the fireweed and elderflower was clearly superior. I detect your hand in the note of horseradish, Goldstein; a nice touch. Your lot can have a bottle each, too." Reggie, Goldstein, and Selwyn grinned at each other; their year hadn't divided by gender. Lockhart grinned, too, but it took a few fulsome bows before he remembered he'd been on a team and should acknowledge the people who had, if Evan was any judge, done all the work.

"Oi," Sirius said, trying oozily to scowl. "I thought the entries were secret unless they won!"

"No anonymity cloaks original thinking," Severus replied. Goldstein flushed in pleasure and looked like she was developing a spontaneous crush (Evan beamed gently. She was tall and statuesque for her age, and unlikely to be dismissed as 'approximately three years old' even if she was one of the youngest in Reg and Chang's year).

Sirius, on the other hand, frowned as though the comment made him uneasy. "I liked yours," Evan said, patting him comfortingly. "Knew it was yours right away."

"They were supposed to be _secret!" _Sirius wailed, diverted from whatever had been bothering him.

"Siri," Evan said, shaking his head slowly and patting his cousin on the back, "nobody else in the _world_ would try to make a drink out of fizzing whizbees that makes you grow antennae and bumblebee wings."

"Good, though, wasn't it?" Sirius grinned.

"It was!" Evan agreed. Much to the disgust of many when the names were read out, it had, in fact, won second place. Severus had said _for pity's sake! If you want honey-flavored try some actual mead, I've got loads. _"Let's go have some."

The party shrank after that, but a lot of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs stayed behind, playing increasingly complicated drinking games. At least, Evan thought they were increasingly complicated. "They're increasingly simple," Severus said, when Evan complained about it to him, with a soft exasperation that was just as good as curling up together. "You're increasingly drunk."

"Why aren't you drunk?" Evan asked, realizing this tragic state of affairs with sudden dismay.

"My family doesn't get drunk nicely," Severus said with a thin mouth, "I just tasted." Evan looked sadly at him, and the hard look dissolved. "You do," he added, with a touch that started on Evan's face and ended behind his head.

"NO!" Sirius shouted from behind Severus, making them both jump and Severus pull his wand. It was a jovial 'no,' though. "You don't just _go at it,_ Sniv," Sirius told him with an air of massive benevolence. "There's got to be a bottle! Evans explained this! You twirl it. FRIENDS, SCHOOLMATES, DRUNK PEOPLE, LEND ME A BOTTLE!"

"Oh, no," Severus said, going even paler than usual. "No, no, no, no…" Evan was confused, but not so confused as to fail to recognize the Last Prayer of the Damned. He patted Spike's hand and trapped him by twining around his arm, because it seemed, somehow, for some reason, like a long-delayed justice.

* * *

Art at AO3; link in profile

* * *

"Traitor," Spike accused.

"You need to get snogged more," replied Evan, guilt-free.

"This is not what you do about that," Spike told him.

"It is today," he said blithely.

"I bet you have Lancaster blood, you hyena. Redheaded and everything. I'm going to start calling you Tudor."

"I don't know what that means, and I don't know what Siri thinks he's doing, but I have a sucksip—a suspicion amounting to certainty I get to watch you being snogged!" Ev told him happily, snuggling his arm.

"Yes you do!" Sirius agreed, beaming at Ev. "Merlin knows why you'd want to, but it is indeed something you get!"

Between the two of them and Reggie's _please oh please oh please do not ruin tonight for me_ eyes, they made Spike cooperate for a while. Narcissa probably would have been on his side, but Narcissa had taken some of the witches and nonwinning vodka bowls away to the Prefects' Bathroom when things started to get silly. Spike kept the bottle's mouth away from himself for a while, but then Sirius caught him at it and Evan confiscated his wand (because if he hadn't, Sirius would have, and although Sirius was behaving himself for the moment, that would never ever ever be allowed).

Evan snogged quite a lot of people, and it was very nice. Sirius seemed to snog _everybody_, with an almost alarming enthusiasm which was not squelched by coming away from Mulciber with a bloody face. When he and Ev got matched up, though, and when Sirius got aimed at Severus, the bottle mysteriously wobbled off elsewhere, even though Evan still had Spike's birch wand tucked away safely.

Reggie, under his big brother's gimlet glare, got a lot of pecks on the cheek. He clearly felt this was massively unfair, but was putting up with it. At least Lockhart was blissfully immune to stern eyes, so Reg didn't spend the _whole_ evening being treated like porcelain. Once he realized this, there was a great deal more cheating. He and Sirius had never been able to keep from spiting each other even when they were most desperate to be friends; it was only a question of whether any given piece of thumb-biting was hateful or habit.

Avery got banned for biting and groping people who didn't want him to, but Mulciber was fun to watch. So was Wilkes, although she, as Evan felt later he would have predicted if he hadn't been three to seven sheets to the wind, was responsible for ruining it for everyone.

Severus had been tolerantly tolerant of the whole affair, although Evan (gleefully) anticipated retribution once he got his wand back. He'd seemed less annoyed at being more or less forced to kiss people than at Sirius coming over all brotherly just for the evening. He kissed a lot of witch hands and wizard cheeks. Evan got a deeply unsatisfying peck on the forehead, although the whispered _not with people watching_ that came with it was mollifying. He seemed to enjoy making one or two of the Ravenclaws he talked to about classes and one of the Hufflepuffs who'd honed in on his voice squeak, though, and Goldstein's refusal to take gallant for an answer was successful.

Wilkes's wasn't. To give her her due, she probably wouldn't have been so stubborn about it sober, but it ended up in Severus abruptly standing up to get her off him. With her ankles locked behind his back, it didn't even work. Then there was a shouting match about whether she, as a witch, should be held to the same standards as Avery, and whether a yes gave her more freedom to snog who she liked than Severus's mugglish prudishness admitted or just as much responsibility as any wizard to take a damn 'stop' when she got one.

It didn't end nearly as well as Severus's last shouting match with a Slytherin witch. Couldn't have with Sirius there looking on in soggy glee, probably wouldn't have anyway. By the time she stormed off to sulk on Macmillan's lap, most of the party had snagged a last drink and a vial each of Soberall and Hangunder and skulked out. Evan thought Macmillan wanted to skulk, too, but he hadn't managed to get to his feet before she sat on him. He didn't seem to be complaining, though, with a china-doll witch insisting he help her demonstrate her attractiveness to all stupid and blind fools-who-would-not-be-named.

Sirius was not a skulker, and was probably not physically capable of skulking. He was in no hurry to leave, either; was trying to play checkers with Reggie on a go board. Evan sat with a sketchbook propped on Avery's back, because he thought his Uncle Orion would like a picture of his boys getting along. It probably wasn't going to be the best picture of his life, even the best inked one of this week, but he could get the heart of the scene and do it over when the room was spinning less.

He could hear but not really understand Spike and Chang, talking above his comprehension level. His current one, anyway. All he really understood was that Spike thought her 'sunshine' entry had been clever and that Dumbledore would like it. They were pouring endless bottles of vodka out of the refilling sample bowls, making a stockpile for gifts and sales. She was getting to keep a few for helping out, and helping Severus pick out one to give to her grandmother when they met.

Eventually, it got to be that hour when the light from the lake started turning a darker green and the torches flickered on. Evan heard Spike sigh, and understood that Slughorn's charms on the sample bowls had faded. "Limited editions," he was saying to himself consolingly.

Evan smiled to himself and planned his next letter to Malfoy, who would be pleased to know that some of his 'financial genius' was sinking in. Provided he remembered. Avery was snoring, and he felt close to it himself.

There was another sigh, and then Spike (reluctantly, Ev thought), went over to the Blacks. In what was, for Spike talking to Sirius ( 'just tasting' might not have meant _just _tasting), quite a gentle tone, he reminded them that there was still such a thing as after-hours, and that Reg had class in the morning. Evan felt that the resulting bedraggled duet of _nooooooo_ was heartwrenching, really, and he saw that Spike was not-smiling as a success rather than from a lack of effort.

"Come on," he chivvied them, "we promised Slughorn we'd have everyone out of here by sundown."

"I'm not everyone, I'm family!" Sirius announced, aggrieved.

"Kin but not kith, Black; you don't live here," Severus said patiently. "If you don't get back to your own common room soon, your prefects will come after you." Sirius shook his head with a slow, sly shrewdness, and Severus said, "Oh, yes. Your lovely, charming prefect is the most inflexible goody-two-shoes that ever donned a robe, and if you want to get nagged and scolded all week for irresponsibility, I don't."

"Never happen," Sirius said confidently. "Not tonight _my_ prefect." He beckoned Spike down to whisper something in his ear.

"That's in _Hogsmeade,_ Black," Severus said, still patiently. "It's Wednesday." In case Sirius was too drunk to understand, he elaborated, "Not a Hogsmeade weekend." As a further condescension, "There are no students in Hogsmeade tonight. Can't get there."

"No, no," Sirius assured him earnestly, "you can, because what you do is…" And then there was a slurry explanation Evan wasn't listening to, because Chang was kissing him goodnight and swaying dreamily out. It seemed to involve a lot of hand gestures, but Chang ambling off was worth watching.

You could think about what you'd put her in to paint her. She was too short for a cheongsam to show her at her best, but maybe a kimono or stola. Or about what if she were really someone else, polyjuiced, and what they'd be like with her lush curves, if it would soften them. Probably not. Or if knowing they were beautiful would change the color of their confidence, the flash of black eyes.

But then Spike was straightening up, very pale. "You're not ser—you can't mean that!" he demanded, backing away from Sirius. "Nobody knows what makes those—it could be poltergeists or banshees or…" he glanced out the window, through the lake water, up at the sky, and went even whiter. "Rosier!" he snapped, formal in mixed company even in his distraction. "I need my wand back. And your cufflinks!"

Evan tossed him his wand, but asked in bewilderment, "My why?"

"_Accio Rosier's formal cufflinks!" _Severus snarled without answering him, and barely stayed in place long enough for them to zoom down to him from upstairs. "Swanning about down here, letting everyone get pissed, and all the time, she—_bastard,_" he spat at Sirius, fumbling them into his sleeves. By the time he'd hurtled out the door, they'd stretched themselves into shining silver bracers down his forearms.

Ev and his cousins blinked at each other. "Er?" Reggie asked articulately.

"Mental," his brother said with wise grandiloquence. "Always said so. Completely mental, Sniv."

"Granddad gave me those," Evan said sadly. He sighed. Spike's transfigurations never held for longer than a few hours. Ev should get them back all right as long as they didn't get lost or fall in a meat-grinder. "He's right though, you know, Siri; Evans won't think twice about barging in here and dragging you back by the ears. Not that I object if you want to lose points," he added with a smirk.

"_Ohh,_" Sirius said, slow enlightenment dawning. "_Evans_. I thought he meant Moony. Moony's _my_ lovely charming prefect. She's Jamie's. Except, not charming. Yeah, probably," he admitted, and wavered to his feet.

"Better take some Soberall before you see her," Reggie said, looking worriedly up at him. "You might run into the Tartan."

"Aw, I can have Professor Pussycat eating out of my hand," Sirius boasted.

"Evans, too?"

He paused, nearly overbalancing, and admitted, "Evans is on the screechy side." He meandered over to the table by the door, paused, and went back to nick a couple of the bottles Spike and Chang had filled. Then he did go take a swallow of Soberall.

Ev and Reg watched with interest, because sometimes the side effects were entertaining. Spike could brew the potion so no one got them, but didn't always bother. Evan wasn't sure whether this reflected his opinion of drunkenness or just his streak of schadenfreude.

For a minute they thought Sirius was having one of the turning-green-and-bubbles-out-the-orifices reactions, but there were no bubbles. He just turned slowly green, and not the approved nearly-teal shade: a milky, sickly, horrified green. And instead of any bubbles, he breathed, "Oh, _fuck,_" and was gone so fast he left a smear of rubber on the floor. And two smashed bottles, the careless git. They could be repaired, but people had been walking on that floor. In shoes and boots.

Evan blinked at him, then looked at Reggie, tilted a thumb after Sirius, and cocked an eyebrow. Reggie seemed just as baffled, though, so Ev shrugged. "Come help me get this lot stored away," he suggested. "There'll be hell to pay if it's all stolen when Spike gets back. Nobody's even picked their prizes yet."

"We'll break things," Reg said doubtfully, looking cross-eyed a few feet in front of him.

"We'll just have a _little_ Soberall first," Evan decided, because it was a good kind of swimmy. "And a lot of Hangunder." He was looking forward to a nice, long, warm evening of _not in front of people_ when Spike got back from whatever he thought was so important. Maybe a nice, long, warm morning, too; not having Charms after breakfast had been a vital point in the planning process.

Spike didn't come back all evening.

Evan waited for over an hour, and then went out looking for him. There was no risk of getting into trouble. As a prefect, it was his job to go combing the school for students out of bed. It felt odd to be out at night without Spike or Narcissa, though. Cold, and the back of his neck kept prickling.

The portraits were singularly unhelpful. It was without precedent in his experience, and it wasn't a no-help-to-give kind of unhelpful, either. The portraits of past Slytherins tended to tell him they couldn't say: a red flag so obvious they might as well have just said, "Sorry, under orders." Other portraits shrugged helplessly, lied badly, or found urgent business elsewhere.

He did, at least, believe the elves in the kitchen when they told him they hadn't seen anyone he was interested in. They seemed to have been occupied by the slew of disgruntled younger students who'd decided it was only fair to stuff themselves with sweets if the upper forms were having a party.

He was just thanking them dispiritedly when a youngish elf with cornflower eyes and elephant ears popped in. Without much hope, he asked, "Nandy, have you seen Snape?"

"Oh, yes, Evander Rosier!" she squeaked. "Nandy is just bringing Severus Snape tea in the Infirmary."

He'd been trying not to think of that. Spike ended up in the infirmary a lot, of course, but Madam Pomfrey could heal most things in seconds. Assuming, that is, she didn't decide whatever had happened to you was your own fault and you ought to suffer. But Spike had long since had her reasonably convinced that he didn't go seeking trouble out. She knew he helped Slughorn keep her stores well-stocked, too, which might have kept him on her good side anyway. If he'd gone to see her, he should have been back in short order.

"Thanks, Nandy," he said with a tight throat, and left—without running, but at a good clip. You never ran, except in play. A fast stride only said you were busy, but a run told watchers that there was failure or weakness somewhere.

Sirius, it occurred to him in a slow way, like a bubble struggling its way up from a tar pit, had very nearly flown. He walked faster.

Not unexpectedly, the infirmary was dotted with groaning short people who had been condemned to suffer. There was a curtain up in the back, and Evan's throat closed all the way for a minute. He couldn't let the kids see it, though, even if they were preoccupied. Some of them might remember, later.

"Has anyone taken points from you lot yet?" he asked in a long-suffering tone, leaning against the doorframe and tapping his wand against his shoulder.

"Yes?"

He frowned. "Three points per year from each of you for not knowing your limits or taking precautions," he told them. "And another eight from Slytherin, Blakeney, for lying to your elders and doing it badly."

Another groan went up, rather louder and of quite a different shade. He shrugged, and suggested, "Next time you decide to make piglets of yourselves, take a digestive potion first and don't waste the mediwitch's time."

The mediwitch herself came out from behind the curtain, regarding Evan with disfavor. Her long chestnut hair was unpinned, in a thick braid over her shoulder. She was quite pretty, out of those formless robes. "You don't look hurt," she said crossly.

"I came looking for my little lost lambs," Evan explained, not entirely truthfully, tapping his prefect's badge with a grimace as he ambled over to her. And, not coincidentally, the curtain.

"Take them if you want them," she offered generously, her attitude transforming as she learned he didn't represent More Work.

"I have mercy in my heart for their more temperate roommates," he apologized. "But one of the elves told me Snape's here, too?"

She hesitated, and they looked at each other for a long moment, she uncertain and Evan implacable. "He should stay the night," she said finally.

Evan considered several answers, but they would all have given too much of himself away. In the end, he just walked past her and through the curtain.

He found Severus curled like a boulder on top of a cot, eyes buried between his knees. The tea was on the table next to him, steaming and untouched. He was very muddy, scraped up generally, and bleeding through a bandage on his back, but he seemed more or less intact. Evan touched his arm carefully. He was icy to the touch, shot through with fine tremors. That explained the puddle of blanket around him; it must have been shivered off.

"Spike?" Evan asked, very softly, closing his hand on the cold arm.

Severus turned his head enough to look at Evan. His exposed eye was red and puffy, and Evan knew just from the shape and dead gloss to it what the rest of his face would look like. It was his _raged and screamed and battered himself against an uncaring world until there was nothing left_ look. Evan hadn't seen it in years, had only seen it once since it had become something he cared about. Severus had been less fraught about being a scapegoat outside the dungeons once being friends with Ev and Narcissa and Reggie had made Slytherin safe for him. Had been better able to take things in stride and give as good as he got without (usually) hysteria.

He sat down next to him, pressed a kiss to that bared inch of skin, tasted salt. "I will take you home," he vowed quietly, and Severus jerked back into his knees as if he just couldn't bear it. His hand closed tightly on Evan's wrist, shuddering his bones.

They were just sitting like that when Madam Pomfrey came back. "He's been here all night?" he asked her, keeping his voice low. Surely not, with all that dirt, all those little scratches. Surely she wouldn't have let those stand.

"One of the teachers wanted to speak to him after I'd fixed his back," she said, choosing her words carefully. Evan could see she wasn't going to tell him much, and that was so strange, because she was always happy to rant about Spike's battles with the Gryffs, at length. They weren't just incessant, they were creative, and that kept her on her toes. He suspected her of enjoying the challenge as much as she found it infuriating. "He's only just come back. He ought to stay," she repeated. "He's in shock, and that… that cut wants watching."

"Why is it bandaged?" he asked, barely keeping the sharpness out of his voice. "Why didn't you just heal it?"

"It was a dirty wound," she said with her eyes on their hands. She just told him, instead of telling him not to tell her how to do her job, which was terrifying. And she was, he could see, nearly-lying, which was worse. "The bandage is drawing impurities away. It's better if they bleed out, we don't want them trapped inside." Severus made an unvoiced choked noise. "He should be all right," she said in a very firm convincing-everybody voice. "But it should be watched."

"We'll do what needs doing," Evan said. "Just tell me." When he had his instructions and had led a numbly unresisting Severus to the prefects' bathroom for a very hot soak with soft mermaid music, he remembered to ask, "Is Evans all right?"

There was a long silence, and then a rasping, bitter, swallowed noise that made his every hair stand on end even before he realized Severus was laughing.

* * *

Yes, the kid is one of _those _Blakeneys.


	3. Spring

Unless it's obvious, you don't know for sure until the next full moon. Severus waits.

* * *

**Warnings **for

1) I was originally going to call this story The Slough of Despond (SoD for short), and this chapter is largely why. Roller-coaster, though, remember: they have ups, too.

2) slash more serious than snogging. Not graphic, but serious. Everyone is age-of-consent by the time anything happens onscreen, but the likelihood of anyone in Slytherin (in the '70s, under lazy-faire ol' Slugabed) having waited for their sixteenth birthday is, uh, yeah, not seeing it.

(I blame Severus for both those puns. If you want to call them that. They don't deserve the distinction. He will commit worse.)

**Notes: **I was asked recently whether Tobias is going to be a DE victim. Getting questions is awesome, as it a) tells me people are reading and interested and b) gives me an excuse to g/u/s/h chat about the boys and/or think out loud about worldbuilding and plot points. Which can be not only fun but helpful. Getting reviews and other forms of encouragement is awesome generally, and I thank everyone who has so far.

...Anyway, yes, questions are encouraged, especially if something isn't clear—but if you want to find out what happens in the war in this 'verse (and I hope you do!), well, when Severus has passed out of the Wicket Gate, he'll have to walk through the Valley of the Shadow.

And he will fear whatever evil he darn well pleases, thankyouverymuch. Fear is an appropriate response to, uh... To... Um, Bella? No, tricky but manageable, so maybe... er... Well, if he can if he WANTS to, he's Slytherin, it's ALLOWED. —Lemon drops! It's an appropriate response to lemon fizzy evil highly suspect sherbet thingies. They're obviously drugged. Veritaserum. And psychotropic. Clearly. So there. XP

Valley is an ensemble fic, so if by then you've had it with Evan's opinions & prejudices etc (which aren't mine), you'll be in luck.

* * *

The next few weeks were an unbroken nightmare: one of the ones where the most important thing in the world slides ever-further out of reach as you fight at a snail's crawl towards it through treacle. When Evan thought back on it later, it seemed to him that he'd been intensely aware of an unrelenting thunder in his pulse points the whole time, a crashing wave pounding hard against the inside of his skin.

Of course it wasn't like that in the moment. At the time, he was occupied with trying to divide his attention beneficially between his coursework, not letting the team down on the pitch, Reggie's tense shoulders, Narcissa's worried eyes, and Severus's unending silence.

It wasn't that Severus never spoke at all. He would answer teachers, in an empty voice, when they decided his wooden expression meant he wasn't paying attention. He still helped the kids with their homework, and they seemed both less traumatized by it than usual and appropriately unsettled by the fact. Insisting their year pay him as usual for tutoring seemed to be too much effort, but Narcissa quietly took care of that. Evan was desperately afraid she might, in the end, have to just put the money in his trunk, no teasing, no grumbly kowtowing, no games.

The only person he really talked to was Evans, and she was not to be envied. As far as Ev could tell, he seemed to be trying to warn or convince her of something, over and over, and not something she wanted to hear. Her impatience kept sending him spiraling into incoherence, and back into stifled silence, hot and helpless, cooling dully back to lead.

As much as Evan wanted to slap his fellow prefect, he couldn't quite, if he was honest, blame her. He could tell from Spike's face that he was talking around something, just as Madam Pomfrey had been. And Evans had known Severus since they were kids. Even if she was the Gryffiest Gryff to ever grow a mane, she had to know he wasn't being straight with her.

There was no way a person like her was going to have any patience with that. She had a right to expect that Severus knew her well enough to know it. He was clumsy sometimes, awkward often, never dim.

The silence made Evan think of dark magic. Not the black and bloody kind the aurors always meant, not the kind they learned to counter in DADA. It made him think of shadows that went on forever, mirrors that would reflect you back a thousand times until you lost yourself, brides and bridges made of smoke and snowflakes, castles choked in thorns, swansdown beds and glass slippers that would chop you off if you weren't a perfect fit. Deep and dense, fragile as spider silk, a knot that no swords or unpicking could loosen.

They were walking to lunch one day, Evan and Narcissa, and heard raised voices from the stretch of hallway they were about to turn into, young and vicious. But before they could turn it, the voices stopped. They rounded the corner and there was Severus, looking down at frozen children without an expression. Just standing there wrapped in his silence, just watching.

Evan watched them move off together in a subdued huddle of red and green badges, no longer fighting, united in chagrin. Severus's eyes, when he met them, were perfectly calm. Not indifferent, but unmoved. In the common room that evening and for many nights afterwards, Evan saw some of those same kids bring pillows next to the couch Severus was studying on. They'd sit there for a long time, doing their homework and playing chess. Touching his elbow now and then, pointing at a sentence or at the board in a silent question.

It was like that. Empty and unformed, what you brought to it could drown you.

Severus was always studying now. He didn't go to Quidditch practice and no one suggested it to him. He moved like he was underwater; it would have been murder. Evan had more than once seen him in the library during choir hours, too, and the battered cast-iron cauldron wasn't getting much use. He just sat with his books, often picking up a quill to stitch a thought into their margins, writing and re-writing diagrams, trying out nonverbal spell after spell on cushion after cushion. Sometimes he took the books out for air, walking and reading all around the lake.

There was a fast, intense debate the first time he did this. Should someone follow him, make sure he didn't get ambushed? If he needed solitude badly enough to risk it, shouldn't they let him have it? The thugs liked the open grounds near the castle, and liked the forest, but they didn't seem to see much point in the lake when it was too cold to swim.

And they weren't themselves these days.

Sirius was almost as quiet as Severus, unsaturated, always looking like someone might hit him. Lupin was subdued as well, although he looked like he might do the hitting, if prodded. He and Evans moved in lockstep, Potter swinging in and out of their orbit, caught between them and Black. Pettigrew often dogged Potter's heels, as ever, but the oppressive atmosphere of his House must have been much for him. He seemed to be spending as much time as he could with the Hufflepuff girls in and around their year. He was after easy and unthreatening company, Evan assumed, which he might learn was a mistake. Hufflepuff girls didn't play games, as a rule, but they meant business. Pettigrew could find himself betrothed before he graduated.

Evan caught Severus looking at Lupin sometimes, in class or in the Great Hall. Just looking over the top of his book, no expression. Not angrily, nor as though he liked what he saw. They were sitting near each other in the library these days, too far to talk but close enough to hear. The space between them was a howl of rent cloth, tattered threads strained between the halves. Evan tried to capture the feel of it on paper many times. He never felt he'd gotten it right until years later, long after he'd been cleared to work in oils.

There was a different kind of tension between Severus and Narcissa, much easier to pin down. It hurt her to look at him, but she didn't want to spook him. He looked, Evan thought, like he wanted to lay his head in her lap like a unicorn and sleep there, or maybe die, but wouldn't sully her with his touch.

She'd sit close to him, ask questions about the spells he was working on, lean over his shoulder and ignore the cringing till it eased out. Her questions often led to thoughtful looks, and sometimes an intense spurt of erasing and scribbling. She explained matters as well as she could to Malfoy, who was offended because Evan's notes had gotten terse and Severus had stopped writing altogether. She'd never been a hands-on person, and doing these things seemed to comfort her enough to be going on with. She accepted the gulf Severus kept between them with equanimity, dealing with it half by pretending it didn't exist, half by pretending it was unremarkable.

Evan, thank Merlin, received no such consideration. On the night of the party, Severus had dully suffered himself to be tucked into his own bed, but had woken everyone up screaming. That had never happened again, but it hadn't taken Evan long to realize that the only thing preventing it was Severus casting a silencing charm on himself before falling asleep.

Obviously that was unacceptable.

He ignored the limp shoving and tepid proto-glares and spelled their beds together—which didn't work. Tight mundane knots in their winter scarves did. Whoever had provided the furniture had been very dim, had assumed Slytherin kids could only think in magic, or had decided that anyone thinking outside the box should be rewarded with success.

It only took half a night for Severus to absorb the idea that Evan was simply going to ignore all attempts to treat him like immaculate white lace. After that, he clung like a limpet and slept much better for it. So did Evan. On Severus's bad nights, he'd wake with a skinny body against his back, pinning him to the bed, tense as piano strings, living armor between Evan and everything.

They'd never gone as far together as Avery liked to suggest, not as far as Evan had gone with other people. Evan knew what more complicated things felt like, and none of them ever struck him, once they got started, as a particularly compelling reason to stop kissing Severus even for a minute. Not when they both had capable artisan's hands. Severus wasn't apt to ask for anything even before he'd shut down, but he'd never seemed discontent.

Now he'd pulled back in some ways, though he'd pulled closer in others. Once the curtains were drawn, they might study together, feet tangled as they pored over a problem set, or lean on each other's backs, each with their own book or Evan with his sketchpad on his knees. Severus's back did heal, although slowly, leaving an angry scar. It didn't seem to hurt him after the first fortnight, but he didn't want it touched. They were never not touching at night, and they took early nights.

On the other hand, there wasn't any more snogging. Hands, yes, he barely had to think about Severus's hands these days before they were right where he wanted them, or teasing about going there until he stopped caring that they were in a room with other people and was just on the edge of forgetting how to be quiet. He was kissed, but only with closed lips. Severus flinched away from Evan's open mouth, wouldn't be brought over the edge or even near it, arched into touches but only on regular skin, moved Evan gently away from his softer places.

Evan would have had a hard time understanding this before, but under the circumstances he thought he could just about wrap his head around it. He himself, if he'd sat down to make a decision, would have thought he'd really miss snogging people. He did miss it with Severus, but that was all. It was a fun thing to do, a light thing, and he didn't feel like fun or lightness these days. They were inappropriate, not-now feelings. Severus had become a grave and weighty joy to him, and it wasn't something he wanted disturbed for any nonsense. Any frivolity, Spike would have said, or froth. If Severus felt about pleasure the way Evan felt about fun, forcing it on him was not the way to remind him it was good. He'd have to feel better about other things first, become someone who could stand it again.

Around the middle of May, about a week after Evan's birthday, Severus caught him after dinner, drew him into bed, closed the curtains. "Detention tonight. Maybe all night." His voice was dull and rusty. It had gotten deeper fast, his voice box growing unstrained by daily use.

"What did you get detention for?" Evan asked, as startled by the news as by being talked to out loud. He'd gotten used to being spoken to in head-tilts, in little finger motions and mouth-and-brow-shifts, by wistful, tired eyes.

Severus shrugged listlessly, not meeting Evan's gaze. Half a bitter smile curled his mouth. With more irony than Evan had heard from him since the party, he said, "I am to be detained."

"Severus, you've barely talked for weeks, and now you're not telling me the truth."

"Would if I could," Severus said, grimly unapologetic. Wrapping himself around Evan, he buried his face in his neck and turned, as far as Evan could tell, into a breathing statue. Questions went nowhere. Stroking him seemed appreciated, but only made him cling tighter.

It might have been ten very quietly hysterical minutes later that it occurred to Evan to try, "Severus, _please_."

There was a silence that seemed to Evan like a pebble falling into a cavern. Just when he was wondering what his magic would do when he couldn't stand it anymore, a small voice asked, "Read to me?"

"What?" Evan asked. He felt he might have collapsed in relief if he hadn't had a cobra coiled all around his torso, holding him up. Something to do, anything.

"Anything."

Not, as Evan had thought for one mad second, an echo of his own thought. Or not exactly. Close enough, at the heart of it. "_Accio book,_" he cast into Severus's trunk, without unseemly haste. Probably.

What he got was in Greek. Despite doing well in Runes, he was nowhere near fluent. A translation charm took care of that. "Suppose," he read, opening to the bookmark, "that in the gymnastic exercises, a man has cut you with his nails, and by crashing against your head has given a wound. We neither show any signs of anger, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterward as a traitorous person. Yet we are on our guard against him—not as an enemy, nor with suspicion, but we quietly get out of his way."

Severus hitched against him, a laugh more like a sob. "Perfect."

Evan read until his voice was in rags and kept reading. Nothing in his life, not even Madam Pomfrey's lies or Severus's first game, had frightened him as much as did not being stopped, scolded and smacked for being stupid, drowned in honeyed tea the moment he started to rasp.

When the sun was low in the sky Severus untangled himself, moving as though every separated centimeter hurt him. He looked at Evan, who thought for a moment that he was going to get kissed. Instead there was a feather brush of long fingers over his face, and then Severus had left. Evan could hear his shoes on the floor, moving away at a ruthless clip.

That was it.

"What's up with him?" Avery asked from the other side of the curtain, sounding as though he were blinking.

Evan drew the curtain back. Avery looked disappointed to see him, too, fully dressed. He was a generous voyeur, you had to give him that. "Detention, he said." Strictly speaking, it was true. Evan didn't _believe_ Severus, but that was what he'd _said._

"Oh, well," Avery said with a resigned grimace. "It was quiet for a while. 'Course, he's a better decoy when it's not."

"I suppose," Evan replied with chilly politeness.

"Tim," Mulciber horned in hastily, "how about some Exploding Snap?"

Evan failed to study for a few minutes while they played, and then shamelessly dug into Severus's trunk. There were partitions that were warded against absolutely-everybody, but most of the books weren't in them: practically an invitation. Within moments he'd found exactly what he'd wanted without knowing he wanted it: the so-called 'biography' Severus's mum had sent him for his thirteenth birthday, back in their second year. The 'Doyle' Severus had been threatening him with almost since getting it, had kept carting around even though the idea of purebloods seeing it made him nervous.

It did read like a biography. For the first few pages Evan didn't like it any more than he'd liked the Stoical _Meditations_ he'd just read aloud—and that was a very, very low bar.

About the time that the insufferable, uncivilized subject of the narrator's morbid fascination started disdainfully ripping other authors' detectives to shreds, though, Evan startled both himself and his roommates by starting to laugh. Waving their raised eyebrows away, he settled himself more comfortably into the couch and opened a bottle of Chang's lemon, moly, and doxymint 'sunshine' vodka.

Even though he only read for a couple of hours and took only a sip every time he saw his friend slyly peeking out between the words, even though he was reading at a leisurely pace, he'd made a considerable dent in the bottle by the time the door of their room opened.

At first it was only Evan giving Severus more interest than an _oh, it's you_ glance. Something in the quality of his silence, though, made the other two look up at him again. Evan was already riveted. There was a crispness to him as he stood there, a solidity and an almost magnetic charge that Evan had both nearly forgotten and starved for like air. He hesitated a moment, looking at Avery and Mulciber with eyes that, but for their immoderate pigmentation, might have belonged to any living human being.

After a moment, he said, "Out." Firmly. Not rusty or dull at all.

Evan was barely breathing. He also seemed to be on his feet. When had that happened?

"Er… why?" Mulciber asked, raising an eyebrow at Severus. He was, Evan saw, deciding whether or not to be offended.

"Because you'd much rather take your game elsewhere," Severus said, neither commanding nor reasoning with him, simply explaining how the world was.

Avery was coming down on the offended side, but Mulciber glanced at Evan. "So we would," he said agreeably, and gave Evan a little _you owe me_ gesture. Evan only saw it in his periphery, and answered with a silent wave of _we'll discuss it later_.

Severus was already stepping out of his shoes as the door closed behind them. Evan breathed,_ "Spike_."

"Excuse me," Severus said, advancing on him. Evan took a step forward to meet him and was steered with decision towards the bed, pressed down. "I don't wish to be impolite," Severus announced courteously, his wand shredding Evan's trousers, "or take liberties," and there went his pants, "but this has been rather on my mind for some weeks now."

He knelt between Evan's legs with an _anyone with an objection may step to one side for later disembowelment_ air, and Ev barely stuffed a wrist into his mouth in time to stifle the scream. Spike was unpracticed, but, as Evan had noted before for other reasons, that _tongue. _And even more than that, the fine texture of his hair under Evan's other hand, the poke of that nose against his stomach, the herbal scent rising in the heat... they brought home who this was so strongly that Evan wouldn't have lasted ten seconds if Spike hadn't written into his skin a rune more evil than any dark magic he could think of right at that moment.

"No you don't," Spike rose to purr into his ear, pressing him down flat as he jerked and whined. "Not a chance, Ev. I'm not _done_ with that." Evan reached for him and got the exact kiss he'd been wanting, deep and sweet and unyielding, all the focus and decision he'd been refusing to consider might have been leeched away for good. It would have sent him spiraling, only Spike wouldn't let him. "No you don't." It was very nearly a growl this time, and what it pulled out of Evan was very nearly a whimper. "Not till I have your pulse in my spine."

He didn't seem to be in any hurry to get it, and allowing any particular bit of Evan to go unbitten or unsucked also seemed to be off the table. Ev couldn't have kept count of the number of times he'd been sure the rune couldn't possibly win against the rising tide in him, even if he'd tried. By the time they were rocking together, locked inside each other every way they could manage, he wasn't entirely convinced he still had a body. Nothing so completely made of sobbing relief and white bliss could possibly be flesh.

It was almost better later, when he was buzzing and aching but there was so much Severus so tight in his mouth that he couldn't doubt it was real. He was settled enough to appreciate things, then, the scents and textures and, _and, __so much_ the sounds Spike made. Wanted to make. Or felt so hard he couldn't bite them back. Just the being-allowed-to of taste.

Almost better, too (almost, because anything that was actually better would have stopped his heart), was lying curled up and sated on a Spike who would _talk to him_.

"You know it's never going to be that good again," Spike said idly, absurdly. He had a hand in Evan's hair, and Evan could feel his heartbeat against his face.

"Good," Evan said, instead of _of course it will, I've got you back_. "I don't think I'd survive another one of those." Hearing and feeling Spike chuckle under him, low-voiced, was yet another best thing he'd ever felt. He smiled. It hurt his face a little, but he didn't mind. "Best late birthday present ever, though."

"You didn't like the erasing brush? I can't return it anywhere; I got the unicorn hair from Hagrid."

He grabbed Spike's hands in case he tried to take Evan's brush away. It was Evan's now and he couldn't have it back. That was _not on. _Ev had magical rubbers that worked even on oils, not just ink, but they'd strip a canvas white. The brush was much weaker, and allowed for subtlety. Evan was going to make Severus patent it and ask his parents about finding a buyer for the production rights—once he'd finished gloating about having the only one. He hadn't felt like gloating much lately, but now he was going to start. "Best _late_ birthday present, I said."

"Ah."

He paused. "Ready to tell me what all that was about?"

"I'm not sure what I can tell you," Severus said, curling in on himself a little, as careful with his words as the portraits had been on the night of the party, as Pomfrey had been. "Something very dark might have gotten into that scratch. Something contagious. We couldn't be sure it hadn't until tonight. I couldn't risk…" he trailed off, and pressed a fierce kiss into Evan's temple.

"You were acting like you were already dead," Evan said quietly into the smooth heat of his skin. "And after dinner…"

"It was improbable," Severus said, just as quietly, "but not impossible. Something like that; maybe as bad."

"Narcissa's going to stab you in the face," he mentioned after a while. Because he wasn't going to do it himself, but he needed cheering up again.

"Well," Severus said, sounding, bizarrely, just as cheered by the prospect as Evan was, "we know there isn't anything, now, so that's all right."

"Why are you happy about this," Evan demanded, a little grin tugging his mouth up again, "what is _wrong_ with you?"

"It won't be the third or thirtieth time I've been hit in the face," Severus said lightly. "Best reason I can think of."

Evan raised his head to stare down at him. After a carefully judicious moment, he decided, "I hate your life."

"No doubt I'll rejoin you on that bandwagon later," Spike predicted without concern, and rolled them. Armoring Evan again, just like the bad nights, except there was no fear in the bed with them now.

* * *

Art at AO3; links in profile  
_Spell after spell on cushion after cushion  
Excuse me, I don't wish to be rude..._

* * *

Incidentally, this is set five years before the official recognition of HIV.

In case anyone was wondering what happened to Evan's silver cufflinks, they're back in his trunk. You'd never know they got all dented by werewolf teeth while transfigured; Severus's transfigurations are ephemeral at this age. In fact, Evan doesn't know. He doesn't give a damn about his stupid cufflinks. Hasn't given them a thought—which is why they didn't come up. That's also why the swollen rash poor Remus had around his mouth for a few days wasn't mentioned. Remus feels he could probably, under more normal circumstances, have come up with a better story than _I am not speaking to Sirius Effing Black because he thought it would be funny to replace my pillow with a Chinese Chomping Cabbage, being fully aware that I sometimes sleep face-down._


	4. May

Remus loses the benefit of the doubt, Severus loses the benefit of the truce—and Irma Pince, if she sees how he treats his books, will lose her freaking mind.

* * *

**Warnings** for brevity, swotty fluff, politics, and an (at least theoretically) open relationship. Severus has a graphic imagination and is _understandably_ taken by many for prime DE material. If this worries you, the word 'euphemism' is your cue to skip the rest of the paragraph.

**Notes**: Talking about what happened to the cufflinks last chapter made me think about what else doesn't get into the story because Evan is all, _LALALALA, I am Bella's cousin and I only care about what I care about. :3_ So here's a fun fact for you: if this had been set in the _first_ half of the year, it would have been largely about his bland, innocent, cutthroat machinations to become Quidditch captain next year. It's not that he wants it, exactly, but anyone else but Reg would be happy to let Severus play bludger-sponge, and Reg wouldn't be able to argue with Severus about it. And he's not quite sure anyone else on the team, including Severus, could compose an elegant or efficient strategy if he read them the instructions and moved their quill-hand for them. However, the season is over now, he's secure in his success, other problems have slammed to the top of his priority list, and the whole issue is off his radar. Like, _poof._

* * *

By the weekend, not only did everything feel back to normal, but everyone was being themselves _in spades_. Friday was the third time that week that the Slytherin and Gryffindor hourglasses in the great hall underwent a violent revolution, the fourth time somebody had to go extract Severus from the infirmary, and the second time a senior prefect had felt it necessary to look meaningfully at Evan. Ev was still too relieved (and well-petted, and well-cuddled, and well-rested, and, bluntly, well-tumbled) to care about any of this tedium except the infirmary-related bits, but _prefect oblige_. Or, more properly, _Narcisse oblige_.

It had taken a few days to pull together even a simple plan; there was so much work to do these days. Severus had thrown tutoring for profit to the winds as soon as he'd found his voice again: whipped them all instead into a flurry of group revising. It was working well, too. The rapid-fire of mutual quizzing was almost fun, and Spike's creative howling when anyone was really badly wrong was always _enormously _fun, as long as they only retaliated with a cushion or first-year.

Trying to explain things to other people turned out to be astonishingly helpful for cementing one's own understanding, too. Spike had cackled unrepentantly when Evan had accused him of hogging that advantage. The punishment hadn't gone well. Or, not _success__fully_. Not as a punishment, anyway. And a couple of hours meant for Charms practice had had to be rescheduled. One of them, true, had fallen to Severus meekly and penitently reading notes aloud (_ha._ But he had such a riveting drinking-chocolate voice to be tolerantly, lovingly, condescendingly amused in). Still, the likelihood of either of them having absorbed much, given what else had been going on at the time, was low. Of course, _Severus_ had absorbed—

—The point was that it had been quite difficult for Evan and Narcissa to snatch any private moments to plan in, between class, group study, public meals, and Narcissa's clubs, suitors, and fellow-barracuda roommates. Carving out even quite a simple plan and brute-forcing time for it had taken them days. She and Ev had lured Spike and Reggie into the library so Spike would keep his voice down. Reggie's volume-related flinching was a deterrant at least the equal of library norms, and accusations of neglecting him had been the easiest way to get Spike away from the rest of their year anyway.

Reg took no persuasion and needed no explanation. He wasn't lonely, exactly. He had loads of snogging and revising-buddy options, and the Quidditch team and plenty of sane witch friends to pal around with. With Spike and Sirius both acting like they'd had their legs cut out from under them, though, he'd been wild-eyed and high-shouldered for weeks, bearing a miserable resemblance to the rabbit Evan called him sometimes. Then Ev's year's whiplash dive into OWL fever had left him looking marooned and confused and sulky, all festooned about with an _I'm sure I had a working and quite expensive broom a moment ago, WHO STOLE IT?!_ air. He'd latched onto an invitation to study in the library—like this was Hogwarts and they were all them—as if he had actual claws.

"Severus, darling," Narcissa asked delicately now. "Is it at all possible that any of this nonsense is your fault in any way?"

Severus looked up at the ceiling instead of at her. "I wouldn't say that," he answered judiciously.

"Would others, perhaps, say that?" Evan asked.

Reggie volunteered, "Siri said Spike whomped Lupin over the head with an encyclopedia."

"Good spy," Narcissa praised him warmly, giving him a little hug around the shoulders. "Severus, did you hit Lupin with an encyclopedia?"

"I certainly did," Severus didn't so much admit as proclaim. The lift of his chin rather suggested a backdrop of flourishing banners against a clear blue sky. And possibly trumpets.

"Why, Severus, _why_ would you tome their delicate little pet swot? It was so lovely and quiet!" she mourned. "Not that we didn't miss _you_ talking to us, darling, but everything was so nice and peaceful. You've no idea how much the girls and I got done, and Mulciber and Avery could barely get away with _anything!_"

Spike's mouth tightened. He looked away again, banners shrivelling. "Spike?" Evan asked, laying a hand on his wrist.

His mouth went even smaller, but then he took a breath, let it out. "Some things," he said carefully, "some things are so… some things, if a person does them, that person isn't a person anymore. They're a worm."

"Tall worm," Evan mentioned, trying for some levity. Lupin was rather a beanpole these days; Spike probably would have been better off slugging him uppercut-style.

It didn't work. "Sometimes, even if… I know it's an Evans thing to say, but sometimes you have to register an objection even if it won't do any good. Even if it'll have consequences. Not because it'll get you anywhere, just so you can go on meeting your own eyes in the mirror."

Evan and Narcissa looked at each other. "There's registering an objection, darling," she said gently, "and then there's braining someone with a block of wood bigger than their head."

He shrugged, turning back to his notes. "And there's being a doormat," he said, "and then there's Lupin."

"What on earth did he do?" Evan asked, bemused.

Then he drew back, alarmed. He'd seen Severus angry before, and seen him surly, and snarling, and afraid. He'd thought, in the past, before they were friends, that Severus looked like a scarecrow, or a rag doll, or a molting parrot. Most unaesthetic. This, though, this cold, bitter, stony savagery that made his eyes glint like torchlight on obsidian and the cords stand out in his neck, this was ugly.

Very quietly, without looking up, Severus said, "In his whole life, Reg, there is nothing your brainless, bullying, bloodthirsty bastard of a brother could do that's as contemptible as what Lupin's done by trying to be friendly with me and then taking him back."

Now they all looked at each other. "I don't understand," Reggie told Severus in a small voice.

"I know," he said, still looking at his notes. "And you're not going to. I'm sorry about that." Then he did look up, at Narcissa, still remote but more human, and shrugged. "And I'm sorry it's open war. This wasn't something I could make a pretense about. Or even think about it. He told me and I just…" he trailed off.

"Spat in his eye, Naj?" Evan asked kindly, covering his hand and squeezing it. Severus didn't answer, but he turned his hand over and squeezed back.

"Evan," Narcissa started to remonstrate. That always was the one thing she and Severus never could understand about each other. She'd cut her teeth on grace, and would always, always slide her way around a problem, without turning a hair. Refinement came more naturally to Severus's than Evan would ever have thought when they'd met, but it was a toy to him, a luxury. Pudding. Elegance was wonderful when you had time for it, but in a pinch, if you ignored that flaring hood, a spitting cobra would try a long-distance weapon first, no matter how disgusting.

Taking the painful, blinding warning was quite a good idea, too. Once they struck, you just could not get the wretched things out of your leg. And the bite was more venomous than the spray. Not graceful when pressed, _naja siamensis,_ not like Narcissa's breathtaking, elusive shieldtail, or even Evan's streamlined and volatile pit viper. Beautiful, though, in its own moody, monochromatic way, and it by-Salazar got the job done. While beating you repeatedly. With its body. Just in case you hadn't gotten the point(y bits) the first time.

"Done is done," Evan said. "It wasn't going to last anyway, you know." She sighed. "But, Spike, it can't go on like it's been this week. You can't be in fights all the time. Our OWLs start in three weeks! Think of it, you might get Es!" he finished in a tone of great horror, and won a tiny smile.

"And the House may kill you," Narcissa put in, not unsympathetically. "I'm sorry, darling, but it's awfully distracting and it makes us look bad."

"I know," said Severus, in a voice as small as Reggie's had been. "But it's not as if I pick fights, Narcissa—all right," he went on in more his usual voice, waving her objection away before it could get rolling, "yes, fine, I hit him, but that was nearly two weeks ago. They just do whatever they want whenever they feel like it. Whenever they see me, I think, really," he added, bitter again, but not in the soulcracking way that had made Ev want to shake him until he came back to himself.

"Then don't let them see you alone," Narcissa ordered. "We can—"

"_No!_"

Miss Pince looked up from her desk with a glare. She had it in for Spike at the best of times, even though he'd never scribbled in any of _her_ books. Evan had caught the edge of a rumor saying her predecessor had painfully taught him better, but he hadn't been interested in Spike back then. He didn't think it was true, anyway. Severus had always had a very firm grasp of mine-and-thine. More likely it was one of Siri's... fables? You couldn't call it slander, really, from Sirius; he just sort of... decided his speculations were perfectly logical and likely and had to be right.

"No," Severus repeated, lower but still vehement. "You lot keep out of it. This is _not_ turning into a Black Family Feud. That is _so far_ above my pay grade."

"You're getting paid?" Evan inquired.

Spike made a face at him. "You know what I mean. You lot get involved and suddenly you're getting into trouble and your _parents_ are involved. Not that I'd object to it not being about me anymore, but it'd be the Cousins' War all over again, and I _refuse_ to be responsible for that. Won't be dragging my bloodline into another one of those, thanks all the same."

They looked at each other a little blankly again. "What does your family have to do with the War of the Roses?" Narcissa asked, visibly not sure whether she was actually curious or just humoring him.

He smiled blackly. "My family _was_ the War of the Roses. Mam's a Prince."

"_What?"_

Miss Pince glared up again, but Narcissa's shocked delight annoyed her less than Severus being autocratic.

Narcissa lowered her voice anyway. "_Really_, darling?! Why didn't you tell us?!"

He blinked at her. "Does it matter? My father's still my father."

"You little idiot," she said fondly, "of _course_ it matters!"

"That's… disturbing," Severus decided, although he was smiling crookedly at her.

"See?" she beamed at Evan. "I was right! I _told_ you he had too much magic to be a mudblood from nowhere!"

Evan rolled his eyes once she was looking at Spike again. Yes, Spike had as much raw power as mortal wizard could desire, but so, sadly, did Evans. Maybe there'd been something in their water growing up. Like a ley line. Or three. And Dumbledore's mother had been muggleborn, and he had everybody topped. Exponentially. You just had to be in a room with him to feel it if you had any sensitivity at all. _Any_ size room. Granted, he was old as wands, but Evan and Reggie's granddad was nearly as old, and even Arcturus Black's presence seemed diminished when the two of them met.

"Halfblood from York, that's me," Severus said peaceably. "Only, I regret, not actually York, because that's where the grandparents are and they and Mam have been dead to each other since I Sorted. I hear York is quite a nice place. Takeaways and bookstores and fountains and everything. I'm definitely going to visit once I can apparate."

"You goose!" Narcissa declared, hugging him impulsively. Evidently, Evan thought, she'd been too enraptured to hear the jaw-dropping bit about his grandparents. "You should have said! A Prince!"

"Half a Prince and no crown jewels," Spike reminded her bemusedly, tolerating it. "So I don't see why this is important."

Surprising Evan, it was Reggie who answered. Of course, his branch of the family was its trunk, as it were, and had long since taken charge of tracking the bloodline. Paying attention to this sort of consideration had been drummed into him all his life.

"Because nobody can say you're a climber if your mum's from a family like the Princes, Spike," he said soberly. "_I'm_ not criticizing her," he added hastily, although Evan knew thinking about mixed marriages made Reggie just as queasy as anyone else, "but when people know you have Gaunt blood, they'll say, 'oh, his mum made a mistake and he's fixing it, it's all a bit sordid but at least _he_ knows what his duty to his line is.' Not 'he's got some nerve, trying to get his muddy hands into the Blacks.' Because, er… they say that. Um. Sorry. We _tell_ them," he added hastily. "But they do."

"…And that's disgusting," Severus declared, making a face.

"That's how it is," Reg said, not arguing. Spike sighed.

Evan hooked his foot around Spike's ankle and squeezed his hand again. "This is all most gratifying," he said, "but the problem of keeping your highness—"

"_Don't,_" Severus begged, turning to him in distress.

"—alive till the end of term remains," Evan went on inflexibly. No one seemed to be looking at them, so he snuck a quick kiss.

"He could stick with Evans?" Reg suggested.

"That just makes Potter hunt me down even when he doesn't see me," Severus gloomed.

"And Mulciber's an ass about it," Evan told Reg. "I could do without milady Boudicca myself, speaking personally, but he gets so _ideological_. It's no good Spike dodging trouble in the castle if he gets it in the teeth in the bedroom."

Severus slid him a sly glance under dark lashes. Evan gave him a little _you know what I meant_ kick, grinning.

"Stick with Mulciber and Avery, then," Narcissa said. "That's what you used to do, isn't it, darling?"

"I did," Severus agreed, sighing, "but that got me into fights with _Evans,_ and besides, they're just as likely as not to pick fights themselves. And those are the worst ones. I can't give anyone a chance to save face and back off if they're there, even if there's an opportunity. And Avery really likes fighting and Mulciber always wants to try out every spell he's ever heard of, and I can't pull punches in front of them, and _they,_" he meant the Gryffs now, "always want to get creative. And I think they know, really, that four to one is contemptible. They seem to want to prove what happy warriors they are taking on a group when they get the chance, golly it's more satisfying really it is," he mocked them scathingly, and sighed again. "We've lost more points that way…"

"Well, then," Evan said, not without sympathy, "I'm sorry, Spike, but when you can't latch onto Reg or one of your Ravenclaw chums or shove Lockhart at them…"

It took Severus a second, and then he blanched. "_Oh,_ no."

"I'm afraid so, darling," Narcissa said, patting his hand. "You're going to have to make up with Lucy."

"Making _up_ with her I don't mind," Severus said, cringing. "As long as I can avoid making _out_."

"Good luck with that," Evan chuckled.

"Don't be a baby, Severus," Narcissa scolded, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "She's very talented, you know."

"I do know," admitted Severus, "but she's so _grabby_. And _bouncy_. I mean, she's so exuberant, I keep thinking she's going to eat me. I don't mean in any sort of a euphemistic way, I mean with rent flesh and lots of blood and organ scraps spattered all over the walls and tendons and marrow gnawed from the cracked and splintered bone."

There was a pause. Then Evan asked, in rising delight, "What do you mean, you do know?" Narcissa kicked him, probably for failing to join in her _ew_, but he really couldn't pay attention to nonsense like that when, _well_.

Droll, Severus told him, "I'm sorry to disillusion you, but my uniqueness is not unlimited. Not even I can put her off without interruption from the beginning until the end of time."

Evan cracked the table with his wand and all their books and notes flew into their bags. He grabbed Severus by the elbow and levered him to his bemused feet. "You're telling me all about it _right now,_" he announced.

"I'm really not," Severus told him, blinking as he was propelled out.

"That's what you think!"

"I want to hear, too!" Reggie said forlornly.

"_Nobody's hearing!_"

"Isn't he precious?" Evan asked Narcissa, beaming, and shoved Spike out the door.

* * *

Art link in profile:

_Storytime! (no it's not) OH YES IT IS! :DDDDD  
_

* * *

**Notes:**

• You don't get a surname like Prince because _all_ your ancestors were fishmongers.  
• Pretty much everyone in the War of the Roses was descended from John of Gaunt, through one wife or another.  
• Richard III (total Gryff or Huffie; read Josephine Tey's _Daughter of Time_ for a short and excellent mystery that explains why Shakespeare's characterization was politically motivated and/or based on a confused source) and Anne Neville had a son who died about the time he would have gotten a Hogwarts letter. Richard was on the throne at the time, but he was _clearly_ going under. Any parent more intelligent and loving than power-mad would have jumped on the chance to get their kid the heck out of Dodge.  
• Elizabeth I probably didn't have a bastard child by her stepmother's husband when she was a teenager, but there was a not-totally-incredible nasty rumor about it at the time.  
• Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, and great-grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville (and _her_ mother), were popularly suspected of witchcraft by their contemporaries. Largely because they were charismatic women who married way, way up and weren't particularly meek, but hey.  
• And whatever did happen to those two nephews of Richard's? 'Cause boring household accounts say they were being fed and clothed (and humiliated by being treated like, well, Richard's nephews and wards instead of his lieges) when the Lancasters (notably Harry Tudor, the future Henry VII, a Slytherin and PR master if ever there was one) were screaming they were already jailed and/or dead. And the bones found in the Tower don't fit their description.

I like to think the Tudor and Plantagenet lines buried the (double-handed battle-)axe at one of the Continental Wizarding schools. Probably, given Severus's nose and coloring, in Italy or Spain, but you never know. The whole boiling of 'em were crazy-pigheaded; it might have been Hogwarts after all.


	5. June 6

Lucius has a Bright Idea, and Severus was mocking Celestina Warbeck before it was cool. The pub is supposed to be neutral territory, but you can't expect people who call themselves _Marauders_ to have good boundaries.

* * *

**Warnings** for PTSD and nonconsensual body modification  
And Evan's imagination, which is just as graphic as Severus's. Although in, er, a less DE sort of way (he's just a legacy, after all). Also less cranky, disciplined, verbal, depressive, coherent... 'course, most people's are. I mean, Sev, am I right? Man needs a liquid-hug drip, only he'd rip it out and beat you over the head with it.  
But seriously: besotted bi-boy brain alert.  
Warnings also for nonhuman cooking_._  
And Gilderoy. _Yeah._

**Chapter Notes: **My beta/britpicker w.i.t.s (thankyouuuu) has seen this whole story (and a whole lot of the next one), but she's on fandom hiatus for a while. And this chapter and the next one have each gotten about 40% longer and denser over the last week. Ideally I'd at least wait and give it another revision from a not-last-week head-space before posting, but I'm already off-schedule. I could probably have posted over the weekend, but by then I was _finally_ able to visualize some art for this chapter. Which is important to me, if no one else. ;p

Anyway, because my beta has not seen the final draft of this and I wrote most of the new bits late at night and not in the most Dumbledorian state of mind, it is more dense and parenthetical than other chapters. If you have questions, ask. You'll get an answer one way or another, even if it's just 'you'll find out if you don't jump ship,' and it might help me re-write more clearly when I have my head sorted.

Questions about Evan's incoherency, however (oh, you'll know when), I'll leave to your own imagination, Dear Reader, to answer.

**Chapter art** (links in profile)  
• Hagrid was a nice old bird, really  
• Proto-Professor Snape wants popcorn (and will not intervene till he gets some)

* * *

Evan gave Wilkes flowers and chocolate and shamelessly begged her to stop being bouncy and abrupt and overtly lecherous around Severus so he'd stop being so flinchy and let her snuggle him and Evan could get pictures. She'd laughed at him, but also taken the bribe, the subtext, and the advice. She was a decent sort, really, behind all the sparkly evil.

Severus did not give her flowers. Evan wasn't sure exactly what it was he'd done. An apology for hurting her feelings seemed out of character, since apologies were often taken as admissions of wrongdoing and Wilkes had known Severus was touchy about both privacy and personal space long before she'd tried to feel him up in public.

And Evan didn't think for a minute Spike would have offered any part of himself as coin or olive branch. Not even if he'd wanted to be close to her just because. He might have thought about it, and lashed at himself for not being Slytherin enough to make himself do it, but no, never. Severus was Severus. As intelligent as he was, he could be awfully silly about some awfully basic things. There was nothing he wouldn't lose or endure if the other choice was a sacrifice of integrity. He'd hide an inconvenient truth where it probably wouldn't be seen and do damage, but that was as far as he could bend. It made problems instead of sense, made him brittle, limited his options, but there you were. Their fight had been over her access to his personal space: he would never have ended it by inviting her in.

Still, he'd clearly done something. Narcissa said it was 'throwing everyone else under the Express' and they were gossiping like house-elves. Also that Severus was not to be told. She said he would undoubtedly, if told in plain language that aiming Wilkes at other people was called gossip, stop.

Evan decided he would rather plot improbable methods for getting Spike to agree to a three-way snog (or, indeed, re-read his Arithmancy notes, perhaps even his History notes) than have that assertion explained to him. He nodded wisely and did not smile. Smiling would have told Narcissa he didn't understand what on earth she was talking about.

Instead, he wrote home and asked Linky whether gossiping was normal elf behavior. Apparently _discussing masters' probable needs_ was normal elf behavior. Whereas lowering himself to ask self-evident questions about belowstairs habits in insulting language was very naughty time-wasting slumming behavior. And next time Linky would tell Mistress instead of humoring Master Evvie and sending him nice things he didn't deserve _only_ because Linky was hearing exams was like getting ready for a banquet and so Master Evvie must be keeping his strength up and doing all his Houses proud.

Evan looked between the scold of a letter and the toffee-almond biscuits that had come with it. His very favorite, and he never got them at school. The Hogwarts elves didn't bother with homely treats much.

Then he looked at his favorite roommate. Curled up in a water-dappled sunbeam on the common room sofa like a smallish black panther. Comfortably shredding a blanching third-year's essay into teeny, tiny red-spattered pieces for her own good (and fun, and profit).

It occurred to Ev that he'd probably been doomed before he ever got on the Express. Unless he was the one who'd made them both like that? No, Reggie's elf was just the same, in their case it had to be hereditary... oh, well. Doom kept things lively and warm, though it did involve more fretting than he would have checked off on an order form.

Keeping Wilkes around helped with that: cooled hostilities a bit. Potter cared worlds less what Severus was doing when he was doing it with a pretty girl who was neither Evans nor inclined to turn on him and reward Potter's mockery with admiration for his cleverness.

Reggie noticed that, too—out loud, regrettably. Evan was never sure whether Lockhart had started off trying to volunteer to be such a pretty boy himself or not. The monologue went on for several minutes and got completely tangled up in whether Potter was attractive or clever enough to be admired. Sirius was, although not so much so as Lockhart himself. Severus was certainly clever despite his _one or two teeny tiny problem areas hardly worth mentioning really_ _um yes anyway ahem where were we_, certainly clever, although, again... Evan had lost track at this point because Spike had had to be drawn gently away before he could decide whether to  
a) throttle the kid with his bare hands,  
b) shove him through a lake-facing window and 'grudgingly and reluctantly decide only at the last possible second whether to' save him with a humiliating levicorpus 'after a difficult and prolonged struggle with himself,' or  
c) die laughing.

It probably would have ended up _d) __all of the above,_ but you couldn't count on Lockhart not to panic and flail around breathing water trying to scream instead of swimming for the surface. Everyone understood that, but Evan still got a lot of annoyed looks for cutting off the afternoon's entertainment. Avery put a spider in his shoe. It was quite venomous, and Severus got so annoyed about it he _put the thing in Avery's unctuous unction. In class_. It wasn't provable; the spider had still been twitching when order had been restored and _might_ have just dropped down from the ceiling on its own. One didn't need proof to know.

Evan felt he should probably have been touched, but he _thought _it said at least as much about Severus's general state of mind as about the strength of their alliance, or even their friendship. Potions were sacred to Severus, and still not as sacred as defense was. Put the two together? He had no tolerance for people who mucked about in a room with ten variably-stable cauldrons running, especially given his opinion of Slughorn's easy gait and laid-back attitude. He had to have been completely off his head.

The problem wasn't really Potter, though. For once. It was that Spike had apparently hurt Lupin's feelings more than his skull (so the winter holidays must have been _fascinating,_ and it was _frustration beyond reason and well into whimpering tragedy_ that Spike wasn't talking, _aargh_). Lupin himself didn't make an issue of it, which was just a different form of his usual passiveness and so not admirable. Sirius, however, was so pathetically happy to be back in Lupin's good graces that he was all over the chance to take his friend's bruised feelings personally, like a small dog worrying a fermented elephant bone. Siri didn't look like the sort of person who might come over all yappy-pekinese on anyone, but of course you couldn't see his mum when looking at his muscles.

Worse, Pettigrew seemed to have been thoroughly unnerved by the break in his enchanted circle and to want it bound up tight again. Evan wasn't sure if all the other self-styled Marauders realized it, but every Slytherin worth their salt took notice. Pettigrew was bringing Sirius and Potter's attention to Severus a lot, in dozens of often quite subtle ways. Trying, they assumed, to keep his friends' interest in their accustomed favorite group activity alive. It was often successful and had to be admitted impressive, for a Gryffie mouth-breather.

Sirius (who was distractable, not dim, and would have been a Slytherin worth his salt if he'd let himself be) seemed to have noticed, too. He was going along with it, because any chance to be hateful at Severus was a chance to prove his hearts-and-roses for Lupin (or something; that wasn't quite the shade of desperate Evan saw. Or not _just_ that), but Ev could see it annoying him. Pettigrew was getting more contemptuous looks from him than Severus was, these days.

This ratio did not improve Evan's life: Potter's attitude towards Sirius had taken on an anxious flavor. They were always in each other's pockets, as usual, but sometimes Potter seemed to be watching Sirius as if he were a cauldron full of something very unstable. He would see Siri's lip curl at Pettigrew and whip out a deck of cards or some Charms project, or ask about a homework problem, or point Siri at Severus, all faster than the naked eye could follow.

The clashes were no longer daily affairs, but either they were getting more vicious or something else was going on. Evan wasn't sure. He could see that Spike was more upset more often, though, and was shaking off increasingly unpleasant hexes. When he asked, he got a load of claptrap about 'intermittent negativity' being 'more aversive than the steady kind.' He could see from Spike's face that this was truthful but not useful information.

And he wanted useful information badly. Severus was going white-eyed and frozen at what seemed to everyone else like completely random times. Like every Astronomy class. Or when walking over damp loam, and whenever it rained, and sometimes during Defense homework, and when Slughorn asked for an essay on moonstone.

He was jumpier than usual, too. Lockhart tried to peck him on the cheek after a frustrating bout of Charms help and got literally blasted through the wall. With green lightning. It was an interesting bit of spellwork, and Narcissa and Mulciber were both fascinated, but it took some effort to stop the elves hysterically trying to brain themselves on the remains of the wall when the repairs gave them some trouble. At least Severus would apologize to _them_. He was so much himself with elves, skinning them alive waspishly with his tongue, quite enough punishment to satisfy them, his magic sure and unhesitating right next to theirs.

(Evan got a blistering nag of a letter from his mum the next morning, all about his duty to his bloodline. He'd never get another opportunity like Hogwarts to evaluate and beguile so many witches and wizards of good family around his own age all at once. It was good sense to play the field, but it should be done with purpose, not as play: the marriage-search had to be taken seriously. One couldn't get side-tracked; there was nothing more important than spinning their family smoothly into the future...

As he immediately suspected, his latest idle-moments sketchbook had vanished from his bedside table, and from the dungeons entire. Ev didn't agree with Evans about much, but she was completely right about Mulciber's sense of humor. It was just _evil._)

There was also an unfortunate incident when the gamekeeper's enormous black barghest, with whom Spike usually got along well, tried to jump up and lick his face like it was any old Tuesday. Hagrid needed a new roof afterwards, but he was understanding about it since Severus was in a State and had managed not to hurt the dog. He gallantly said the old one had been starting to leak. Hagrid was a nice old bird, really, for all his stomping around, tendency to give Gryffs the benefit of the doubt, and refusal to understand that he was a _half-breed_ and food he thought was lovely broke normal people's teeth.

Not that the dog would have been hurt even if Severus hadn't yanked his aim up at the last split-second. Ripper was fireproof. He thought it was all terribly exciting, and was still running around in circles yapping baritone, clearly begging _again, again!_ long past the point when Severus had gotten his breathing under control.

Their last Hogsmeade trip was right before their first exams. Evan wasn't sure why. It might have been because the teachers were sadists and had bets on who'd try to take their Charms OWL or NEWT while hung over. Or it might have reflected their understanding that without the chance of a break there would have been even more nervous breakdowns than there already were. Both, maybe; he wouldn't that past Dumbledore.

It didn't help with Severus's non-academia-related nervous breakdown. Around the time they were passing the Three Broomsticks and the dingy shack the townies claimed made scary noises at night, he had a full-blown panic attack. It looked to everyone else like a fever and muscle-cramping curse, very possibly one that came complete with heart attack.

Being Severus, though, he had a vial of calming potion up his sleeve along with a dozen other first aid remedies no one was likely to need. Once he'd fumbled it open and taken a swallow, he'd said he was under no circumstances going straight back to the castle; damned if he was going to let his stupid lizard brain boss him about. He had, however, allowed them to distract him by asking what on earth he meant by 'lizard brain.'

Narcissa was strangely easy to convince. Evan didn't trust her. Quite a lot of Slytherin was easy to convince, but that mostly wasn't strange. She, on the other hand, not only liked Spike but cared about him and wasn't a pushover. So: suspicious.

Once they got into town proper, the trip was largely uneventful. Severus let himself be talked into staying with Evan, Narcissa, and Wilkes, once it was pointed out to him that he was supposed to be seen with Wilkes and she and Narcissa were friends.

"Or something," Wilkes said angelically.

"_You're_ something, anyway," Severus told her, which she took as a compliment. It was the best way, when he was in a grouchy mood and probably didn't mean much by it anyway.

They ambled through the stores, acquiring stationary, sweets and tea and window-shopping while Severus peered at ingredients lists and choked melodramatically at price tags and jotted notes on how he thought various things in Dervish & Banges might have been enchanted.

They lost him in the new music store, which probably saved them from getting thrown out. It turned out that Severus's opinion of more or less all wizarding music was absolutely scathing. After the third time someone set off a music ball, he was unable to keep them to himself.

Goldstein got there when he was arguing with an enchanted harp about whether Celestina Warbeck's work should be categorized as jazz or big band or a parody of parroting for which she should not so much be sued by someone named Ella* as dismembered with a tuning fork. It was the kind of Sodding Snape Debate one couldn't help staring at in rapt captivation until the train had finished wrecking and was reduced to embers and puddled steel. The employees were caught in the horror, too, despite the fact that one of them was being harangued by a violin for having stopped in the middle of tuning it.

* * *

* Who had to be muggle, because Narcissa had clearly never heard of her.

* * *

She came in and started to say something, and stopped, and then hesitantly asked Narcissa, "Er… can I interrupt him?"

"_Interrupt him at all costs,_" Narcissa and Evan hissed at her through their teeth. He had his arm around his cousin's waist in case she decided she needed to disassociate herself by fainting.

Goldstein gave them an understandably terrified look, but rallied, "Naj?"

"—_Directly stolen_ from— What?" he asked, turning to her, all the outrage falling off his face in favor of mildly irritated curiosity.

"Could you step into Gladrags for a minute?" she asked. "Only, Gildy's having some kind of meltdown over a waistcoat, I think it's redder than he ordered? And Reg said if somebody could come and shout at him who couldn't be tempted to take points…"

"The irony," Evan told Narcissa solemnly, "is brain-melting."

"And yet this is the world you're stuck with," Severus informed him with mock-sympathy, and asked Goldstein, "Where is this?"

She stared at him to see if he was joking. When it became clear that he was not joking and honestly did not know where the only clothing store on the rather small town's very small commercial street was, she said weakly, "I'll show you."

"Buy me a parasol, Naj!" Wilkes called gaily after him.

"Someone shake Wilkes, she's sleepwalking," Severus instructed the world at large, and started for the door.

"Severus!" Narcissa called, and he turned. "Will you be long?"

He shrugged. "Unless you want to go to Tomes and Scrolls with me, after."

"Meet us in the Three Broomsticks when you're done, then."

He raised a hand in acknowledgment, and followed Goldstein out.

"Should we be letting him out with just the milk snake for an escort?" Evan asked uneasily. "I know she likes him, but she's not what I'd call a pit bull."

"He's safe enough with her," Wilkes assured him. "They might tease him a bit, but they won't want to look like trolls in front of her. She does a _lovely_ distressed Have You No Honor Sir? So unless there's some other receptive audience…"

"Narcissa," Evan started, taking a step towards the door as his unease turned to apprehension. This was _Hogsmeade_; half the school was walking about.

Evidently thinking sanity had returned to his world, the shopkeeper chose that moment to approach them and ask if he might show them anything in particular. Evan saw Narcissa decide to teach him not to interrupt, and then she turned with a very sweet smile. "Why, yes," she said pleasantly. "We'd like to hear something by this Miss Ella, please. For comparison."

During some other month, Evan would have been surprised that Spike got to the Three Broomsticks before them, with a trip to the bookstore planned first. Under the circumstances, he assumed Spike had shared his thought about how good a watchdog Goldstein was likely to be. What did surprise him was that Malfoy was at the bar.

He wasn't with Severus, who was tucked in a corner behind (Evan squinted, with a vision-enhancing charm) _Draught Dissembly: A Guide To Ingredient Identification_. Severus looked up, either because he could feel Ev's eyes on him (a sweet, comfortable hook of a thought) or was looking up when anyone came in (far more likely).

Evan gave a just-a-minute signal, and sighed when Severus's eyes flickered to Malfoy without surprise. If Spike knew someone he was corresponding with was in the pub, he should have said hello. Maybe he had and Malfoy had been terse? Not, alas, the most probable explanation.

He shook his head a little and kept up with Narcissa, who Malfoy was rising to meet. "Miss Black," he said, with pleasure and also without surprise. "Miss Wilkes, good afternoon. Hullo, Lance."

"Afternoon, Malfoy," Evan returned. He leaned up against the bar next to him, watching the crowd and keeping an ear open while Wilkes flirted without especially meaning anything by it.

After a while, without any signal from Narcissa that Evans could see (impressive), Wilkes excused herself and went off to chastise Macmillan for neglecting her. Evans could only assume that this was out of pure evil, since Macmillan wasn't being as subtle as he thought he was about holding hands with Longbottom's girlfriend's cousin under the table.

The change in Malfoy's posture was immediate, which took Evan aback. He remembered Malfoy as being smoother than that. Was Malfoy not trying, or was it that Evan was older? "Charming girl," Malfoy told Narcissa, "your friend, but I had thought it would be Snape with you."

Evan noted that Narcissa was taken aback, too, by having her conniving directly referred to. "He wanted to go to the bookstore first, so—"

With amazement, Evan realized that Narcissa didn't know Severus was already here. The difference wasn't some supernatural Spike-sensing ability of Ev's, either; he could have named every student in the pub for her and most of the townies. So could Spike and Wilkes have, although probably only the students in Spike's case. It was something Narcissa was especially good at, in fact. And, yes, Spike was hiding behind a book, but he was hiding where Spike would hide and reading a book Spike would read—a book _only_ Spike would have read without being threatened with an essay or exam.

Much more smoothly than either of them was being, Evan took over for her. "So he's quite happy to be antisocial until called for." He indicated Spike's corner by looking fondly at him, as though they'd both known he was there all along.

Fortunately for Evan's understanding of the universe, Narcissa looked taken aback again at her own carelessness, and only for an instant. Afterwards, her face was perfectly smooth, but a little pink. Evan caught her gaze, flicked a tiny glance towards Malfoy, and started to grin at her, just with his eyes. To his delight, she turned a little more pink, and turned up her nose at him as though she wanted to stomp on his foot but was far too mature.

"Let's leave it to you, Miss Black," Malfoy said, just short of unctuous. "Shall we disturb him at once?"

"Oh, no," Narcissa replied, something about her posture suggesting a light touch to Malfoy's wrist, although she didn't actually give him one. "He looks so relaxed for once, the poor dear, let's let him finish the chapter."

Evan, looking over at him, thought that if Spike's hackles got any higher, they were going to be over his eyebrows. There was no drink beside him, either, he noticed, and gave Narcissa a faintly cynical look.

She returned him a slightly irritated it's-not-my-fault-Malfoy's-obvious one, which was fair enough. Also reassuring. He was glad Malfoy's cologne or pointy chin or shiny hair or whatever it was hadn't blinded her; that would have been worrying. "Evan, darling, Malfoy's had the most wonderful idea," she told him.

_And how long,_ he wondered,_ did it take you to make sure he had it?_ Out loud, he asked, "Oh?"

"Miss Black exaggerates its virtues, surely," Malfoy demurred. "Only, I've been enjoying my correspondence with Snape. I was considering inviting him for the summer."

Huh. While he was thinking about it, Evan flagged down Rosmerta for an exchange of smiles and a butterbeer. He took a thoughtful sip, and said finally, "I can certainly understand that. I've thought about it myself."

"But not done it?"

"Evan's family always travels in the summer," Narcissa explained.

"That's part of it," Evan agreed. "We like to get exposure to other art styles."

Malfoy nodded respectfully. Even to a business-and-investment family as prickly about money and status as theirs, portraits were an honorable trade. If you were already in a position to live off your estate's interest and only doing it for love of the work or duty to wizardkind, at any rate. Portraits were how one's ancestry was preserved, and the only way to get to know one's great-grandchildren (and try to keep them toeing the family line) without that tedious being-a-ghost-forever business.

"But even if we had nice, dull, stationary summers, it's a tricky proposition."

"How so?"

Evan took another slow sip of his butterbeer. At the Three Broomsticks, at certain ages it was a toss-up whether you got the kiddie version that was about as alcoholic as an apple or the one that was nearly ale. Evidently Rosmerta thought he looked young, but Evan didn't mind. A more butterscotch-like drink was fine with him if it didn't go with food, especially during a conversation that might be productive.

He swirled the drink in its glass, eying it meditatively. It went against the grain to talk about this sort of thing, especially out loud. You had to consider who you were dealing with, though, and whether you had time to be civilized. "The trouble is," he said eventually, "that Severus is the sort of person who has trouble believing that his company is worth any bother one might be put to in getting it."

Malfoy looked understandably confused. Evan wasn't surprised. When, as a little kid, he'd been on their estates before, Abraxas Malfoy had boasted with cringe-making obviousness about his four elves and twenty bedrooms. He hadn't actually bragged out loud about the diamond chandeliers, but they'd been set adazzle by so many cunningly-placed secondary light sources Evan had barely been able to see his food, and came grizzling away from the exquisitely laid table with a sick headache. Mum had been a stiff and stifled furious at first, but Dad had explained about photosensitivity. He had, fortunately, not explained that Ev wasn't quite over having been attacked by Malfoy's _shrieking white demon ghost-birds_ when they'd arrived; Mum was a Black and didn't have a lot of patience with 'unsettled' no matter how old you were.

"What sort of bother do you mean?" Malfoy asked.

"I don't actually mean any bother at all," Evan told him. He thought he'd heard one of the elves had died since his visit, but even if there hadn't been a replacement, the manor wouldn't even notice an extra mouth.

Seeing him founder, Narcissa came to his rescue. "What Evan means," she explained, "is that Severus is a bit prickly about gifts."

"Ahhh," Malfoy nodded. "Proud, is he? He did seem the type, as I recall."

"Of course he is!" Narcissa said with a little head-toss, and the next few minutes were occupied by Spike's family tree. Evan didn't participate, except to nod absent confirmation when applied to. He was doing a sketch on a napkin to send to his mum. She was going to want to know about anyone in whose company her niece forgot to do basic room-surveillance.

"Then you don't think it's a good idea?" Malfoy asked after a while, and Evan realized this question was for him.

"Oh, no," he said. "I'm sure you'll both have a good time, provided you don't actually let your library eat him." Anything that would keep Spike away from both home and the Gryffindors for a few months was a _brilliant_ idea; well done Narcissa. "But he won't accept unless there's something you need him for. Something you really want, Malfoy," he warned, watching Severus scowl thoughtfully and attack his new book with a battered grey quill. He'd probably done the self-inking spell himself. He might even have gotten the feather off the Owlery floor; you never knew with Spike. "I guarantee you he'll notice if he's being gulled. Or patronized. And he'll call you out on it, right out loud. You don't want that conversation; there is _no_ graceful way out."

Perhaps feeling attention on him, Spike looked up from his book-mutilation and met Evan's gaze. He didn't have much of an expression, but his eyes were warm. Evan smiled, and pushed himself off the counter. "Come say hello," he told Malfoy. "You can write him about it later, once you've thought of a good excuse and he knows you can stand him in person."

"Well, well," Malfoy said, startled and considering, as they walked over and Severus put his book down. "He has grown into his face, hasn't he?"

"He has," Evan agreed, and noted with silent glee that Narcissa looked, unusually, displeased.

In retrospect, Ev realized he should have paid more attention to the gagging and the sudden intense conference that comment had inspired at the table they were passing. Even though it was Them, though, he didn't think much of it at the time. The Three Broomsticks was always neutral territory. It was practically Rosmerta's business model. Universal amiability, clean everything, good drinks, _reasonably_ edible food, high heels, a low neckline, really excellent hair, stockings with seams up the back... she flirted back with Siri, though, which ruined it a bit for Ev. Then again, she flirted back with him, which probably ruined it a bit for Siri. Or, well, maybe not. You never knew with Sirius, either.

Spike seemed to have settled his nerves yelling at the harp and Lockhart, and was on his best behavior. His best didn't extend as far as having a conversation everyone could understand, but he was keeping the guest interested. That was the important thing.

Evan loved watching Spike when he was enthused about something. It was fun even when it was an angry sort of enthusiasm, what with the gestures and the forgetting to stick to words Avery knew. When the subject was academic, he also forgot to evaluate whether the person he was talking to was safe to argue with. It could feel like being pinned by a spotlight of pure extract of Ravenclaw. Hard to take offense at, it was so impersonal, unless you were predisposed to hate him already. His earnestness and intensity were just _engaging,_ even if you had no idea what he was on about.

It was obvious to Evan that Severus was physically intrigued by Malfoy: exactly as he was with people he'd just tried experimental potions and charms on. Deeply, intently, morbidly. Evan could feel him reaching out with the eyes of his magic, could very nearly hear him thinking, _oh, come on, you can NOT tell me that shade occurs in nature! _

Narcissa should have been able to see that for herself, but there were some states of mind that blurred one's perceptions even without magical help. Still, while, Malfoy had gotten happily caught up in Spike's enthusiasm, he was sliding enjoy-this-with-me smiles at her. So she settled down after some initial bristling and a few disbelieving _why aren't you upset_ looks at Ev that he didn't understand. She even let Severus (by then only faking his fascination with Malfoy's hair because passing up a chance to successfully tease Narcissa was like sticking your hands in your pockets when the Snitch was tap-dancing on your nose) pull her into a lively fight about whether a Greek-based spell would work properly for a native Greek-speaker.

Malfoy wasn't stupid enough to side with Severus, and Evan couldn't quite tell whether the occasional hint that he didn't actually agree with Narcissa was a ploy or not. Probably he, like Evan, didn't care. To show willing, Ev asked how much accent might matter. He slipped his hand into his friend's under the table and let them squawk excitedly at each other. Let them yammer while he thought about stylized, dramatic pottery art, and the soft marble curves of representational-but-idealized statues. About how Spike could flap one hand like the sky was falling with his eyes so wide they looked likely to fall out, words tripping over each other on their way out his mouth, and stroke Ogham into Evan's palm with the other. Coll, Om, Nion, Duir... _conductor of light. _

Evan had, by now, had enough of the wretched Doyle read to him (Spike was onto his History notes scam by now and needed bribing) to understand that Severus was begging to be kicked. This done, they exchanged a quick pass of eyes-only grins before Spike went back to explaining to Narcissa all the references he had and could show her later that meant he really was right so it would be in poor taste of her to kill him in vexation.

It wasn't a perfect moment at all: just good enough to create restless frustration. Evan wasn't bored, but he did rather want to go home and stop being social, and it was too soon for that. Malfoy wasn't ready to be done, which trapped them all a bit since they didn't see him every day. Not badly, but as it did mean they were still Showing Spike Malfoy Liked Him In Person and Convincing Malfoy He Really Did, staying was both correct and productive.

Oh, well. At least they were in a pub. Shooting down all arguments on the grounds that he was out of school and they weren't, Malfoy insisted on buying them a round. Evan thought Spike was arguing about it too much, but he stopped with a jerk that meant Narcissa had kicked him, too. It was a good thing he kept 'forgetting' to give his Quidditch boots back after games. Her shoes weren't just steel-tipped: the hexes on the steel were _ nasty. _

When the drinks came, Severus slid the Gryffindor's table, which Rosmerta had had to pass, a wary glance. He did some runework on all their glasses, testing for poison. Malfoy didn't raise his eyebrows, which didn't prove but strongly suggested that Narcissa had kept him up to date on how badly the leonine gits had been harassing Spike lately. Evan knew he hadn't embarrassed his friend like that himself, and Spike sure as scales wouldn't have mentioned it.

Reg might have. However, where Narcissa's version of events usually focused on_ and then he was in the hospital wing AGAIN and the Tartan gave HIM detention, if you can believe it, _Spike couldn't stand to let Reg see things that way, see how tired he got. Reggie's letters home ran along more gleeful lines of _and then Snape tried this NEW spell on them, you should have seen it, Father, their hands and feet switched places, Siri was using the WORST language...  
_

Eventually Severus let them have their drinks, and even tried his own. His eyebrows went up. "What the hell," he said blankly, staring at it. "People drink this?"

"With enthusiasm," Evan informed him, toasting him with his glass and demonstrating. Good, it was the real stuff this time. He liked the sweet kind well enough, but too much at once could turn cloying.

Spike took another cautious sip, and grimaced. "Surely this is the unholy hoppy love-child of toffee and pine resin."

"Pine resin?" Malfoy repeated, startled.

"Severus has a sense of smell that fully justifies his nose," Evan said, grinning and giving Spike a shoulder nudge, "and his taste buds are absolutely freakish. We've had much better tea in the common room since he lost his temper and told the elves to stop storing the leaves in glass because light makes the flavor fade."

"I didn't think butterbeer was supposed to have anything pine-like in it," Severus said, frowning at his glass in his best attempt to gracefully ignore being boasted about. He was so bad at that.

"It might be Rosmerta's cleaning potion, darling," Narcissa suggested. She'd been flattered with a glass of ice wine, and Evan was trying not to look at her. He knew what she was doing with it, because there were little crystalline notes zinging softly through everyone's blood and if she hadn't learned that trick from Wilkes or Aunt Dru she probably had from Evan's mother, just like Ev had. It wasn't safe to look at, if it was an attractive relative and you liked your brain in one piece. Ick, and also Spike would never stop laughing at him.

"You haven't had butterbeer before?" Malfoy asked, reluctantly tearing his eyes away with an air of returning to the important point largely to show he wasn't a barbarian and could if she wanted him to. Also an air of _how old are you?_ He was having something amber in a tiny little glass. It came with a bottle, but it was a tiny bottle. Evan tried not to assume Malfoy was flaunting a high alcohol content at the schoolkids just because it was Malfoy.

"It sounded sweet," Severus said vaguely, continuing to frown at his glass. "It's all cider and garden wines at home, if you don't care for beer. I prefer dry." People from another House might have glanced at each other quickly and turned their faces away from Malfoy; Evan and Narcissa didn't smile at all.

Just as though he hadn't been in any way absently scored off, Malfoy curiously asked, "Garden wines?" It was reasonably well done and won him a point back, though the patronizing note was obviously-defensive.

As far as Evan could tell, Spike hadn't noticed any of this. Apparently not even the wineglass trick, bless him. He was just trying to dissect the butterbeer with his eyes and speaking when spoken to, automatically answering questions like the swot heading into an exam week he wasa. "You know, not grape, homemade, worty or fruited. Whatever's about. Dandelion and elderberry and so on."

"You should try his mead," Evan told Malfoy. He was aware that he sounded like a child showing off his favorite stuffed dragon, and not just because Narcissa wasn't masking her amusement. He couldn't seem to stop himself. It was embarrassing, and clearly the only solution was to work on upping his alcohol tolerance. "He does all kinds of flavors, if you give him a little notice before you want it."

"And the vodka!" Narcissa laughed. Asked what was funny, she launched into an account of the tasting contest which didn't touch on its aftereffects.

Having joined into the story with a cheerful emphasis on humiliating Sirius (Siri wouldn't actually be embarrassed at all, so why not), it took Evan a little while to notice that Spike was being very quiet. He turned to check on him, afraid that the subject had stirred up all of last month's awful.

It was clear at the first glance that the story was not the problem. Severus didn't look traumatized so much as caught between despairing exasperation and blinding rage. He was pouring his butterbeer into an empty vial, and he looked…

Evan didn't do a double-take, but only because he was a Slytherin raised by a Black mother. Everything sharp and raw about Spike's face had gone almost delicate. Despite the drab and very old school robes and the limp hair, Evan found himself thinking of Spanish dancers in frothy waterfalls of red. A glance down showed him that Severus's hand and wrist were finer-boned than they'd been a minute ago, too. And a glance less far down…

Despite fully understanding why Severus was furious (and further annoyed on his own account because Siri clearly wouldn't have minded if Evan had gotten the dosed glass), Evan was more focused on how dry his mouth had suddenly gotten, how warm the pub suddenly seemed, how intrusive and wrong it was to be able to smell Narcissa's delicate perfume and Malfoy's doubtlessly expensive aftershave. He leaned in close while Malfoy was laughing about something involving Mulciber and murmured, "Fix your expression. Nothing's happened, everything's fine, no one will notice if you raise your soles and hunch your shoulders forward. I'll find out how long it lasts and you are _not fixing it before bed_."

Startled, Severus turned to look at him, and the anger went out of his face. Just as low (but not as deep as usual), he complained, "It's just, in here? Right before OWLs?"

"Nothing's sacred," Evan agreed. "We should have guessed they'd try to upset you enough to fail everything."

Evan looked up (Severus didn't) at a throat-clearing noise. Malfoy was looking at them quizzically, and Narcissa with concern. With an apologetic smile, Evan said, "Would you mind terribly if we abandoned you, coz? I'm sure Malfoy will walk you back if Wilkes has disappeared." To Malfoy, he explained, "Narcissa could probably take the whole first week of OWLs with her eyes closed, but Severus and I would both feel more secure with some last-minute revision for Transfiguration under our belts."

He was immediately sorry to have used the word 'belts.' It made his hands ache for Spike's waist, to find out how the bones of his hips had shifted, for every new and tender little swell on his spare form.

"Oh, come," Malfoy began.

"Evan's being delicate," Severus said, constricting his voice enough to sound unwell rather than really different. "I don't think dish soap is meant to be drunk. Nice to see you again, Malfoy, but I think—" Rising, he swayed a bit. Probably getting his new balance, but it did make him look sick.

"Miss Black," Lucius said, also rising, "allow me to apparate your friends to the gates. I'll only be a moment."

"How kind," Narcissa smiled at him.

Evan bent down to kiss her cheek, and whispered, "Get Reggie to ask Sirius how long."

"What?" she whispered back, perplexed. He gave a tell-you-later head shake, and stood again.

Unusually for him, Severus also bent to buss Narcissa's cheek. Evan heard him murmur, "Don't_._ Under control," but wasn't listening. Quite a lot of his attention was captivated by the new angle to the taper of Spike's back, under his robe.

"_What_ is?"

"Nonsense." A flat look and tiny chin jerk towards the Gryffs, who were craning at them, a mix of avid and frowning and disappointed and speculative and, in Lupin's case, unhappily and well-deservedly ashamed. If only that were contagious! "Idiocy."

Getting rid of Malfoy wasn't difficult. He was inclined to walk as far as the castle with them, in case Severus got really ill, but a few words on Narcissa's opinion of people who made her wait had him vanishing into thin air with almost comical speed.

Actually, Evan wasn't one to talk about comical speed, because he wasn't sure there had been any measurable time between the moment Malfoy had gone and the moment his hands had closed around Severus's waist, very nearly actually around, his fingers were _almost touching,_ barely three inches between them, _ that was insane, not healthy,_ he was _in no way short enough to justify that_. Maybe they could get him to eat more chocolate while he was like this, but— but what was he going to look like, when— and, and how could there be room in there for— it might be just as tight as— would Ev be able to _see...?!_

"Not out in the trees," Spike said. His back was even narrower, just everywhere, and it had gone tight with unease.

"The others could come back to the room," Evan mentioned. Or his mouth mentioned. His brain was all lava and lightning sparks against black velvet, a hot, frictionless, scrabbling mess, but your mouth had to be able to work without you. Otherwise you might as well put on a yellow tie and have done.

"Avery'll be drinking till sundown, and Mulciber brought his camera."

He bent his head down farther than he would normally have had to, murmured, "Can I just…?" He stroked a little, just with his thumbs. He could see it in his head, if not in the dark: the flesh of his skin against worn white cloth, under the dark, threadbare robes. Paler skin under everything, heated in the spring evening, maybe flushing a little. As tight-against-the-bone as he usually felt, or maybe just a little more plush? And darker, higher up, private, tender... or flashing with temper, that was good, too. Bright.

"I don't like it out here," Spike said sharply. His hands weren't pushing Evan away, but it was hard to tell how much was the change in his voice and how much was displeasure. "Anyone could be… or anything. No."

Evan sighed, but started walking with him back for the castle. Didn't even keep an arm curled around him, though his arm ached for it and Severus was walking just an uneasy inch too close, body curved a little like he wanted it, too. It would be telling.

Spike would just do that: just level an uncoiled, cold-blooded _no_ at you. He looked different-and-himself and it was shakily unnerving in a lot of ways, many of which were mouth-watering. To have him being _not-different,_ though, that was shaky in only the relieving, comforting ways. Disappointing, yes, but one didn't have to give in and be shallow. Even Malfoy had looked away from the wine-glass trick. Besides, there were always imagination and ink.

After a few steps, he frowned. "You're walking…"

Spike sighed, too, admitted, "My shoes are too big."

"…Don't tell me things like that until we're inside," Evan advised after a moment, "unless you're changing your mind."

That made the world almost completely better, because it won him a laugh. "You're ridiculous," Spike told him.

"That's what you say now," Evan said placidly. "Too bad you haven't gotten that area-silencing spell to work yet, though."

"What?" Severus asked, startled. "No, Narcissa and I worked that out a few weeks ago."

Evan stopped dead.

"More or less," Severus corrected himself. "That can't be done in the dormitories per se; the castle actively won't permit it. But if instead of killing the sound you replace it, that works. We can't make silence, but we can replace all the noise with a sort of buzzing. It's too quiet to hear if you're not close or trying, but if you are it's quite annoying. Given the intention, I call that a feature, not a bug."

"You've had this for weeks," Evan said indignantly, passing over the question of what insects had to do with anything unless the buzzing sounded like them, "and—"

"And I wouldn't be relaxed when the other two are around even so," Severus cut him off. "I don't like thinking they're thinking about me."

"What does what they're thinking matter?" Evan asked out of a complete lack of comprehension.

"I suppose it doesn't really," admitted Severus. "It just feels…" he made an _eyurgh_ noise.

They got a few steps further before Evan gave voice to the question on his mind. "If I called you adorable right now, would I survive?"

"Not a chance," Spike told him, amused. His hand in Evan's didn't feel much smaller, was just as strong. Less knuckley, though. Surely the callouses would be the same? A really thorough examination was in order. Would his lips be quite the same shape? Even in the pub the light hadn't been good enough to tell, and of course looking carefully would have given everything away to people who wanted to know and did not deserve to. His jaw was different, what would that do to the shape, the inside, the size—

"Is it terrible of me to hope it lasts through next weekend?" Evan asked, wrenching his head under control. "I want to get Narcissa to put your hair up, do you in pastels once we don't need every minute for revising. Really strong colors, I don't know about the background."

"Moron," commented Severus, sliding him a fond look. Bizarrely, his eyelashes were less thick than usual. Some of the more muggle-conscious wizards in their year (Sirius) were using eyeliner, but of course Spike wasn't one of them. "If they can brew it, I can brew it."

"You wouldn't mind?"

Severus shrugged. "Unless the butterbeer taste changed the flavor beyond all recognition, I know what they used. A canceling spell didn't work and it'll take a few days to brew the remedy. I'll want to analyze the sample and make sure it is what I think. That adds a day or two, so I'll be stuck like this all week unless it's problematic enough to warrant asking Slughorn or Pomfrey for help. Pulling something they think will be humiliating right before a test that _really matters_ is a new low, but I rather want to set Mam on them for thinking it's humiliating. Or Evans. It'll probably be a nuisance, but..." he shrugged again. "No, I wouldn't mind some other time, if you want, when it isn't exam week or their idea."

"But you don't want anyone to know," Evan stated, trying not to smile.

"I don't like people thinking about me," he said simply. "Looking at me. Not like that. You can say what does it matter, but…"

"I think about you all the time," Ev pointed out, and answered what looked like a genuinely dubious _do you?_ glance with an rolling-eyed _'course I do, idiot_ head-shake. They were at the castle door now.

"Well, you're not _people."_ After a moment, reflectively, "I'd like to see you on it, when I've brewed up some antidote in advance." And, with a sly look, "I'll show you what Wilkes meant about my assets, if you promise to keep it to yourself."

But Evan was starting to feel bad, a heavy curling in him. "Wilkes really upsets you. I thought you just thought she was annoying, but that's not it, is it?"

A sigh. "She's just a puppy, really, it's not… she doesn't mean anything by it…" Evan waited, and finally Spike admitted, "She really does. She's been better lately."

The curling had gone awful, turned to curdling. He'd encouraged her, often. "I didn't realize."

"Of course you didn't," Spike said, arching a wry (and unusually arched) brow at him. It wasn't any narrower than it had been an hour ago. Narcissa had found a picture of his mother once she'd found out Mrs. Snape's full maiden name, and her eyebrows were heavier than his. "You're completely shameless."

Evan stopped and turned to him, stepping close quickly so that he backed up against a wall. Very low and angry, he pressed out, "You have nothing to be ashamed about. _Nothing_."

They were alone in the hall, and Severus was leaning backwards a bit. Evan was acutely aware that if he looked down he'd see something worth looking at, could imagine the unaccustomed fall of black cloth worn thin, and yet he wasn't even a little bit tempted. To touch, badly, but not to look away from the nearly unchanged black almonds of those eyes.

Although he'd pulled back, Severus's nonexpression didn't feel wary or shocked, only open to him, maybe a little sad. "Evan," his friend said on a bit of a sigh. "Ev, it doesn't work that way."

"_Nothing,_" he repeated.

"No," Severus agreed. "If you hear something often enough, it gets to you whether you believe it or not. And I don't know if that's even the main thing. I just… I'm a private person, does there have to be more to it than that?"

"No," he assented readily. "As long as there isn't." A hand had come up to cup his face, and he turned into it. Smiling after a moment, he asked, "If you hear something often enough, is it?"

Severus went wary, pulled back, peered at him suspiciously. "In childhood, I ought to have said."

"Let's test that premise," proposed Evan, somewhat cheered by that familiar look.

"Let's not and say we didn't."

"Oh, I think we will, nightingale," he said, smiling more broadly at Spike's look of wide-eyed horror, far too expressive to mean anything real. They suited his face better than usual right now, those widened eyes: something about the cheekbones. He took a step forwards, and Spike shuffled away. "Moonbeam?" Step, shuffle. "Sloe branch? Inkblot?"

"I'm going to go put a this-room-is-so-boring charm on our door," Severus told him, edging away from him down the hall and into the Great Hall. "If you'd like an evening, night, or, indeed, remainder of term which is in any way pleasant, _never any of that ever again_."

"Did you know the ghost pepper's also called the naga, Naj? It's the very hottest one."

"Dear _god,_" Spike informed him, appalled, and broke and ran. He wobbled a little for a few steps, what with his center of balance off and his shoes not fitting and his trousers both too long and fastened too loosely, but got into his stride quickly. Turning at the doorway out of the Great Hall that led towards their common room, he turned and declared in an accusatory voice, "If you can't doubly and triply prevent all unwanted complications before you get to the common room, you're not coming in."

"Oh, trust me for that, Spike," Ev promised happily, and ambled after him. There was an unnoticed part of his mind keeping him upright and moving and breathing and so on, and a rather larger part making plans for the rest of the afternoon, savoring them. One last part was wrapped raptly about the problem of capturing in paint the heart of someone who might be something different every hour and from every angle, and was, no matter what, always, only, and ever himself.

* * *

**Next:** OWLs.


	6. June 10: Morning

By Thursday morning, Severus was in a thoroughly filthy temper. Defense was one of his best and favorite classes, and he was really in no danger of not getting into all the NEWT classes his swotty little workaholic heart desired (even if he had killed the examiners' tentacula yesterday), but try telling _him_ that.

(Really. Please. PLEASE. What do you want? Chocolate? Money? A year's worth of Snape's notes? Slug Club membership? A job with the Minister? Wilkes? Gilderoy? Footrubs from Reggie? Controlling shares in Coca-Cola? No, you can't have Narcissa, she's not into casual, but we'll kidnap Sirius for you if you want, any kind of ropes you like...)

* * *

**Warnings** for continued involuntary body-modification, OWL exposition, and pseudo-het.

It might help you to wiki columns and make sure you remember what _ionic _and _ corinthian _tops look like, and the texture differences between fluted, unfluted, and solomonic. But only if you _want_ to know how lewd and nerdy Evan is being. You may not. He's secretly as horrible an art-geek as Severus is a lexophile. Really it's pretty bad.

**More important warnings** for Marauders being awful in ways the characters would never have anticipated but you, having read OotP, knew were coming. It's gonna be a long, long day. (Rather longer than one chapter, actually.)

**Srsly.** Canonical bullying and sexual harassment warnings. Off camera, but **b****e warned.**

**Chapter art** (links in profile):  
_It's possible to be vulnerable to good things [NWS]__  
(Minerva so did not sign up for this. (Except she totally did)  
_

* * *

Two straight days of being tested in subjects whose practical exams had been guaranteed to give him problems would have been enough to put Spike in a filthy temper by Thursday morning without help. Being trapped in a body he hadn't wanted altered, in which he couldn't wear his own trousers, cemented it. Even though that day's test was going to be in one of his favorite classes, he was not at his most pleasant or charming. Since this was Spike, that was saying something.

He had better survival instincts than to snap at his roommates just because he was miserable, but his snarly, vibrating tension was contagious. Evan and Avery were both relatively immune to that sort of thing, but Mulciber was twanging like a tuning fork. For once, he and Spike were very carefully not taking their tempers out on each other. As an indirect result, Evans was up in arms, distraught, trying most stridently and earnestly to make Spike understand things about Mulciber he knew perfectly well but wasn't suicidal enough to agree with out loud. Again. Which didn't help.

There were blessings to count; things could have been worse. Severus had reported, when they were all asking each other _how do you think you did _ and _what did you get for the one that made me tear my hair out,_ that he'd done everything old Professor Dwimble had asked on Tuesday, though probably not everything she'd wanted. She hadn't _asked_ for color, or specified how long after the exam things had to stay transfigured.

And Sprout, Evan knew, understood about the problems Spike and live plants had with each other. She'd let him into her NEWT class as long as he'd done well on the written exam. Which he was sure he had, even if he had killed the examiner's Tentacula. Which, speaking of blessings, had gotten significantly more than half the class out of having to deal with the wretched thing, as Wednesday had been run in reverse-alphabetical order.

Severus hadn't even tried to pretend he'd done it on purpose, like Siri or Potter would have, but he'd cringed at everyone's sardonic applause, buried his face in his hands—and then thrown back his shoulders and done a _spot-on_ satire, complete with Godric's Hollow accent and hair-ruffling. He was probably going to pay, but, oh, worth it.

Narcissa had gone to Slughorn for tea with her most infectious 'helpless' giggle and a box of pineapple sponge candy and made a case for turning-a-situation-around. She'd actually cadged them some points. They were still hopelessly behind, but it did Spike a world of good within the House.

Charms on Monday, of course, though long since consumed in the aggravations of the following days, had gone quite well. He'd said Professor Marchbanks had seemed pleased with his nonverbal spellwork. At the end, she'd asked him if there was anything he wanted to show off and been satisfied (once you'd met Marchbanks, this was easily translated from the Severan as 'delighted') with his knife spell, even if the name 'sectumsempra' was about three horrible puns at once.*

Evan wasn't surprised she'd liked it; it was a useful little thing, designed to keep even the most careless brewer from chopping a hand off even when dealing with the toughest ingredients. Also to keep the knife from going through a chopping board, and so one could harvest leaves, fruit, or flowers without either climbing the tree or unnecessarily hurting the branches.

It would only cut one kind of tissue or substance at a time, depending on the wand motion. If you were cutting skin, it would stop at the muscle, and if muscle, it wouldn't go through the skin. Blood vessels and cartilage were treated as part of skin, and cartilage was also treated as bone. You couldn't cut a piece of leather without capillaries in the way, and cartilage was just odd. So it could cut a throat or another artery, if carelessly aimed, but so could a metal knife or any of the other cutting spells out there. As safety blades went, it was fairly comprehensive.

Severus was reasonably sure it had earned him at least one E. Anyone could have told him it would be an O, if he'd been willing to listen and not throw hexes about for jinxing him. The way Marchbanks talked about examining Dumbledore (a subject of conversation every year, judging from Flitwick and Kettleburn's Very Patient expressions) made it clear she was a big fan of creativity. The teachers acted as if their year had an overly-generous allotment of creativity (and this was BAD and DANGEROUS and STOP IT AT ONCE), but Spike tended to get himself noticed even so. He sort of burbled if you let him.

Evan let him. You got useful information that way, and you got_ Spike's voice_ being eagerly (if, sadly, platonically) passionate. It was often interesting, too. And Severus was still (aargh) always staggered and thrown when people put up with him. Arguments and debates he could take in stride, even when they were friendly. Being taken seriously, though, that just blew him away. Every time. Evan still remembered the first time, back in second year, before he'd cared a toss about the scruffy little ragbag or liked him _at all_, the way he'd blinked his eyes wide and his head had jerked back a bit. It wasn't quite that bad anymore, but Severus still didn't take being listened to for granted.

He didn't take it for granted that a listener wasn't setting traps, either. Even he, though, would admit that the examiners were unlikely to have been poisoned by school rumors. He was willing enough to show off for Marchbanks when she asked, and _almost_ willing to believe it wasn't going to come back to haunt him somehow. Her hearty readiness to praise him helped—not because it was an ego-stroke, but because it told him she was playing by Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw rules and raised the probability he really was being judged on merit. So there was that.

Too, shoulder-pads and a few subtle glamours and other aids had kept anyone from noticing Spike's Gryffindor-induced difficulties, so that was also better than it could have been. He wasn't happy on the raised soles and apparently the chest band was distractingly uncomfortable, but he was getting by. Once she'd decided that balancing cousinicide with finding it all very funny was too much effort in an exam week, Narcissa had gone practical and advised against altering Severus's clothes in the opposite direction than usual. They might, she said, get confused, or refuse to turn back. Things as old and much-used by a wizard as Spike's clothes could develop subtle personalities, and since their wizard was stubborn as a pig…

"Boar," Severus had said with a devilish glint, opening his charms book to the inside jacket. He'd had Evan do a picture of a snipe and a white boar (the latter from the Prince coat of arms) in a tug-of-war over a red and white heraldic rose. All his textbooks had developed property-of inscriptions devised to twit her since she had, in his opinion, overreacted to his mother's maiden name.

They'd decided that, since it was Severus, his robes being a bit oversized would be less noticeable than if he borrowed someone's. Despite his and even Narcissa's best efforts, his own were fairly distinctive. _Probably_ wearing newer ones would be dismissed with a collective sneer as swanking for the examiners, but they would at best attract attention he didn't want. He'd been using sleeve-garters since forever anyway, often as a secondary sheath for his wand.

The trousers, though, had been a problem. Pinning them had left obvious lumps. Since he didn't usually wear his cuffs rolled up, it would draw attention if he did now, and making them nearly short enough had required enough rolling-up at the top to make other, even more obvious lumps. Nor had this, according to Severus, been in the least comfortable.

In the end he'd bowed to his fate, and was leaving them off. Since they weren't telling anyone else, he couldn't borrow anyone's. Reggie could have been trusted, and his trousers would have fit. But Spike couldn't be seen in anything as well-made or new as anything Reggie owned without people noticing. Besides, Reggie trended Regency, like Granddad. His trousers really needed a frock coat and knee boots. School robes kept them decent, but Reg's leggings and Spike's battered, clunky work boots? No. Only about thirty percent of the boys would fail to notice, and _none_ of the girls.

So he was having to go without. This was perfectly normal behavior for plenty of pureblooded wizards. Not many their age, but some. Avery didn't even own trousers. Still, Spike was very, very unhappy about it, comparing the feeling of vulnerability to losing a third wand.

"You've still got the important one," Evan reminded him, tapping the birch stick, lying near them on the bed. "And there are benefits…"

Severus was on his knees on their joined bed, examining his sheath belt. He kept gloomily trying to wrench it tighter against a shirt. He always kept his shirts a bit over-long; growth spurts could take one by surprise. This one, on him now, had become a mouthwateringly short tunic. "Do you think if I poke an extra hole in, Mam will see it's not pulled to the last hole and stop nagging me about not taking advantage of the kitchens while I'm here?"

"She'll think it's a ploy aimed at that result exactly, unless she's too blind to see your face. Pay attention, Spike, I'm insinuating at you."

Severus looked at him, blinking. "When?"

"When I tell you that it's possible to be vulnerable mostly to good things," Evan elaborated, sliding a hand, and then teeth and a tongue, up the pale column of his thigh. Corinthian-unfluted, lovely, and he was missing Ionic-Solomonic a bit but he'd get it back tomorrow, so that was perfect. It was a beautiful change of pace for him, literally beautiful whatever Spike thought . Besides, if he let himself get stressed along with Spike, Spike would just get _more_ stressed because _he_ was stressed. It was practically his duty to just let himself enjoy.

And there was such a lot to enjoy. Easy, easy, everything easy and simple and so, so sweet. Absolutely perfect while they were all fretting themselves raw over exams, being able to just reach out and have, barely even needing to take. Just to be able to curl in and pulse together, quick, refreshing, heart-pounding study breaks and long, warm, easy nights, barely moving for hours. Any solitary moment unguarded and easy to subvert, barely anything in the way at all.

He'd been wondering for a while if Spike would accept new pants if they were sober enough that he wouldn't feel mocked and nice enough to be clearly a present Ev was giving himself. There was something to be said for pants so worn-thin they were barely there, mind. Even if that also meant they were too old and fragile to take either bleach or a bleaching charm without disintegrating.

Still, replacing them all with basic cuts in silk without frills wouldn't have put a dent in Evan's pocket money. He'd wondered if the different feel would make Spike move differently. Maybe with a little more secret cared-about fluidity, a little more ease, a little more smug.

The question was academic. The answer to _would Spike accept them_ was, in real life, a resounding _not in a million years, with associated offended yelling_. Still, a pleasant thought. Inspiring, really.

Effectively inspiring, too, the way Severus had arched all the way down to the bed seemed to indicate. Picking the pillow up would probably have been easier if he'd just been after something to bite, but Evan was really, really not complaining. The view was spectacular, and not just the view.

There had been as much of this sort of thing as Evan had been able to (ha) fit in. There was enjoying the novelty while it lasted, and there were the everyday, irresistible twin gravities of Spike's skin and stiff, ferocious anxiety pulling unceasingly at his arms and palms and mouth. There were potions and drugs: the weight of heavy, contented, unsmiling eyes falling closed against him was no potion. And there was just wanting to: why on earth not?

There was this, too: it was probably saving everyone's life. Between the stress of exams and feeling wrong all over and getting the distinct impression that Sirius and Potter were dangerously irked by their little prank's apparent lack of success, the levels of endorphins that kept Ev so mellow he couldn't dredge up any test anxiety at all were barely enough to keep Severus one notch down from hair-trigger homicidal.

Evan thought he really ought to be getting a grateful fruit basket from Lockhart's parents. Maybe from everyone in the lower forms, who were tempting fate with their restless end-of-term rowdiness. Evan remembered what that was like, and made everyone in his year sign apologetic cards to all the alumni who'd acknowledged their existence. He didn't have to apologize to the current sixth and seventh years: their sadistic (if distracted) pleasure at seeing the tables turned was clearly recompense enough.

It turned out that he should have waited until the end of the week, because Malfoy took his card as a cue to write notes of excruciatingly patronizing encouragement to everyone. They arrived Thursday morning.

The one that came for Severus was long enough to come rolled in a ribbon instead of tucked into an envelope. Narcissa, bless her, snatched it neatly away from him. She could do that because he was sitting with them at the table this week.

This had nothing to do with the Gryffs. It was just that otherwise there wouldn't have been a living male Slytherin under the age of sixteen past breakfast on Tuesday, and not many female ones. Reggie might have been an exception, being largely immune to having his head bitten off because he knew when to keep his mouth shut, but was close to a coronary from secondhand stress anyway.

"No, darling," Narcissa said firmly, tucking the letter away. "I'll give it back to you this evening, when you've gotten the world's record in your Defense OWL and you're in a better temper. Lucius hasn't quite mastered the art of not sounding condescending, and it wouldn't be kind to set his letter on fire before you'd finished reading it."

"…Malfoy's Lucius now?" repeated Severus, diverted. He'd been about to snap at her about the world-record thing (one didn't have to understand why to know he was going to do it), so the distraction was an excellent thing for everyone. Himself not least.

"He has possibilities," Narcissa allowed. She seemed to be done with blushing about him, at least when he wasn't there to smell like (what Spike said was mostly) anise and ylang-ylang at her (the ponce).

"Does anyone know what his snake was?" Evan asked, because clearly Narcissa had seen something he'd missed. Her initial reaction might have been hormones, but she was acting clearer-headed now.

Of course it was Jorkins who knew, when the question had run around the table. "Ball python," she leaned over to tell him between bites of toast. "There's nobody like Malfoy for rolling out of trouble and tangling people up owing him future favors."

"Ha," Severus said, looking cynically enlightened without a single drop of surprise, "no wonder he likes Crassus." The ensuing discussion of the Roman patronage system, how much of it had survived in Wizarding Britain, and exactly what kinds of trouble Malfoy was known to have rolled out of took up the rest of breakfast. It left Severus in a better mood, but not so much better that Narcissa gave him his letter back.

"It would be much more efficient to do up an extra room," Spike said in a fitful sort of way while they were waiting for the Great Hall to be converted for their written exam again. "Flipping the Hall back and forth between tables and desks four times a day for two weeks, don't they have better things to do?"

"They want to torture us with old-sausage smells," Mulciber said wisely. "See who tries to sneak food in and who goes green with it."

Everyone looked at Severus, checking to see where his color was so far. Ordinarily he would have been a quite nice honey color by this time of year. _This _year there'd been so much revising, and so much of it had needed the library, that he was still the pale sallow one looked past, not at. It was a shade that went green easily.

"What?!"

"Try and remember to breathe," Evan advised.

"I want my trousers back," he growled, but remembered to stick to the cover story. "You're all mental and they don't give a damn who's got what kind of blood and thinks trousers are muggle and _I want my damn trousers back_."

Evan jumped up and down on the parts of himself that wanted to conspire in earnest against Severus ever getting his trousers back. The cost of being a Black was that you kept it on a leash until you really needed it.

"As long as you keep up your not-vomiting streak," Wilkes said, patting him on the back. "They'd probably find some way to call it cheating."

"Points would certainly be taken away for unsightly stains," Evan agreed. "Spike, do us all a favor and try to relax before the practical, will you? Have a lie-down, read something silly, get some air."

"Get some _sun,_" Wilkes advised.

"What are you doing?" Severus asked them, ignoring her magnificently.

"Tim," Wilkes said. Avery brightened up, and she added, "but only if he answers _all_ the questions, and I'll know if you're lying, Tim. Good marks give us a head start next year."

"Er?"

"Slughorn says it's only fair, darling," Narcissa said carelessly. Evan wasn't sure whether this was true or she was just backing her roomie up and protecting them all from the ignominy of a Housemate failing out of school. "After all, we get points for ordinary exams."

If it was true, it was probably less Slughorn's actual opinion than an underhanded shot across Flitwick's bows that the head of Ravenclaw hadn't noticed yet. Well, maybe McGonagall's, too, a bit, but Sluggy _liked_ the Tartan. He had a thing for pretty witches; liked to be avuncular and admired and have his hand patted and so on. McGonagall wasn't _at all_ cooperative with this attitude, but she was Dumbledore's second, so Sluggy wasn't going to let that stop him. And she was rather a stunner, if you liked them Mum's age and humorless.

Avery made a face, but straightened his shoulders resolutely.

"Think I'll take a walk," Mulciber said. This meant that certain people were likely to have an unexpected pre-exam practical, if they were unfortunate enough to get in his way. "Unless Tim misses a few, maybe," he added with an eyebrow-waggle at Wilkes, who smiled enigmatically.

Cattermole opened her mouth with a coy expression, but Narcissa spoke up first. "Have a _quiet_ walk," she told him sternly. "I intend to have a nice, long soak before lunch, and anyone responsible for disturbing me will be extraordinarily sorry."

"Ditto," Evan said, "minus the soak. My paintbox and I will be up the astronomy tower if anyone wants some very quiet company, but I am _finishing_ my landscape before we go home."

He knew what Severus had been angling for, and would ordinarily have been enthusiastically on board with it. Unfortunately, DADA wasn't Evan's best subject, and he had to look after his marks. He didn't need a Defense NEWT, but he did need to be in the class. His dad ran in circles that were interested in the Dark Arts, and would be disappointed if Evan couldn't at least fake it. Besides, Spike went as dazzlingly loopy in DADA as in Charms and Potions, all integrated theory and screwy philosophy from Merlin-knew-where and leaps of lateral thinking and butcher's-scalpel logic, with Narcissa keeping right up and Mulciber _and_ all the Hufflepuffs shouting a lot. Evan was not missing that show.

Most importantly, visits to many of Mum's relative's and Dad's clients could be, well, challenging. And you couldn't rely on clients liking your work no matter how good you were. Or rivals of clients. Or anyone being polite about their feelings.

So Evan wanted his head clear before the practical, not full of temptingly fresh sense memories. Whereas Narcissa had only been exaggerating a little about how well Severus was likely to do today. He'd get into the NEWT class no matter how tightly-strung he was.

Spike sighed and leaned back against the smooth stones. His fingers were twitching; anyone could see he wanted to be doing last-second revision. Or possibly climbing the walls.

Evan leaned up next to him. He didn't take his hand and quiet those fingers, since they were in a hall full of two years' worth of four Houses, but he pressed close enough to share his warmth. Maybe his comparative calm, if wishes were thestrals. "You'll be brilliant," he said quietly. "Just _breathe_."

"That's not comfortable at the moment," Spike groused, but he closed his eyes and gave it his best shot.

"Clear your head," Evan suggested sympathetically. "Forget about today; what class of flowers is governed by Mars?"

Severus went completely still, and the look he turned on Evan froze Ev's blood. Not in a cold way, though, not at all. "Mars has woods and aloes, moron," he said witheringly, his thin hand sneaking into Evan's and gripping hard. "Venus has flowers as a class. Obviously."

"All right, what specific ones, then?" Evan asked agreeably, squeezing back. Thinking to distract Spike with potions hadn't exactly been alchemical technomancy, but he could take a thank-you gracefully. Unlike some people.

"Anemone, cyclomen, lupin, thistle, obviously, gentian..."

"All the _spiky_ ones, then?"

"You think I won't bite you in front of people?"

"I honestly, deeply, sincerely believe you will, in a million years, not."

"...Shall we count tarragon? It's thought of an herb but it does flower..."

Evan laughed, and the horrible face Spike made back at him had a grin tucked away in its depths.

Seats had been assigned in a serpentine alphabetical order, moving in columns rather than rows. The NEWT and OWL takers of all the houses were completely mixed up. There were so many desks that even though everyone had been sitting in the same seats all week, there was still a lot of confused milling around. Having been placed right up at the front, to just to the right of Flitwick's desk, Evan had no trouble.

This was just as well, because he didn't need extra trouble. He was all right on the creature-identification section, granted, because one could study that by making sketches, and having the cousins and aunts he did had left him reasonably secure about curses and identifying cursed objects. Definitely secure on countercurses.

He was weak on what to do with dark creatures once identified, though, and questions that demanded _four inches on conflict avoidance _had him lost for words. One just _did that,_ what was there to write about?

Eventually he gave up and drew a self-portrait with its hands up a little, soothingly. It had a _Siri, Cissa, just slow down, Bella, I can't understand till you stop shouting and explain, please, Spike, Mum, I _want_ to understand _expression, more concerned than distressed, wide open, listening. After all, they'd specified parchment space, not word count, and there were _so many_ other questions.

Like _contrast Slinkhard and Trimble's theories on the relative importance of intention, willpower and native magical force to the relative darkness of ordinary charms, using no fewer than three examples_. Their instruction had been scattershot, with a new teacher every year. With only a year to beat into their heads what each teacher thought was most important, almost no one had wasted any time on fluff like that.

By the time Flitwick summoned and was knocked over by their scrolls (no one but Mulciber and Pettigrew still thought this was funny) and Evan and Macmillan had picked him up, Ev was wild to get out of the room and go run up a lot of stairs and be wordless in the fresh air for a couple of hours. He stayed just long enough to see Narcissa stretch and everyone around her drool, and Wilkes give Spike a firm shove towards the door and move to interrogate Avery.

Spike and the question sheet glued to his face. _Aargh_. If he was going to stress himself into a frayed ball of nerves before the practical, why didn't he do it _practicing for the practical_? But he was going to have to make his own choices for himself.

Because Evan _hated_ defense essays. Theory, theory, theory! He understood enough of it well enough to feel confident, he knew he'd know what to _do,_ but _word-fountains were Spike's thing and if he had to talk to anyone right now it was going to come out in a Black register_, loud as Aunt Walburga at her worst, he just knew it was. He needed AIR and SILENCE and MOVING or he was really, really going to scream. He couldn't talk to Spike right now. He'd unnerve him worse and he wasn't in any fit state to be soothing; it would all spiral horribly.

If they hadn't had an afternoon exam scheduled they could have geared up and gone to attack each other on the Quidditch pitch, if it were free. Since they did, this wasn't the time to risk ending up in the Hospital Wing. Or sending innocent bystanders there; Evan would have wanted to _hit things,_ and he wasn't trained for that.

So he zipped off for the Astronomy tower at the fastest possible pace that was in any way dignified, patting the shrunken paint box in his pocket reassuringly. Once he was out of everyone's sight he even gave up on dignified. Even leaping all the stairs and long minutes of broomless leviosa-acrobatics that affronted all the ravens (really all of them) didn't entirely calm him down. He should have just gone off to the pitch in the first place, played Beater, let Spike laugh at his terrible aim. It would have been fun and satisfying and ridiculous and distracting. They could have exhausted themselves long before lunch, with plenty of time for a session with Spike's purple liniment, maybe even a nap.

He really had wanted to work on his painting, though. This one was meant to be his watercolor-masterwork. If it was good enough and he applied himself over the summer, next year his father would let him bring oils to school. He'd already arranged with Slughorn for the use of an airy, unused, and well ventilated classroom near the dungeons for a studio. Now he just had to earn it.

There was no way he was going to take a chance on mucking it up while he was too restless to focus properly. Instead, he cast a few safety and comfort charms and folded himself up on the window seat where the telescopes usually sat, drawing the clouds in a cross-hatching style. He was amusing himself putting a very Persian castle on one of them, feeling much more like himself, thinking maybe he could start work on his watercolor after all, when someone on a broom rose up next to him.

Goldstein was so pale her golden freckles stood out like dried blood. "Oh, thank Merlin," she panted, shoving a chestnut curl out of her eyes. "Ben said you'd probably be up here."

Ben was her brother: a Ravenclaw in Evan's year. Unlike Siri and Regulus, they were closer to two years apart than one. He and Spike and Lupin had had very loud, happy arguments in Arithmancy until Spike had hit Lupin with _Faundel's Bestiary_ and the Great Wall of Ice. Lupin's more civil one-on-one conversations didn't seem to get Goldstein's juices flowing the same way. Fortunately for Goldstein, Spike could have a loud, happy argument about magic even all by himself.

"I'm not going to have to teach you how to breathe, too, am I?" he asked, mildly alarmed.

She wasn't amused. "Lance, you've got to come down."

Suddenly the alarm felt a lot less mild. "What's happened?"

"I don't know," she said, tight and upset, "I left to find someone as soon as… people were _laughing, _and… and I didn't stay to see, but it was getting ugly fast."

Evan didn't wait for her to finish talking to close his book and get up. "Did anyone go for a teacher?"

"I thought maybe better not to," she said miserably, landing inside and dismounting, "in case Naj got a chance to get violent."

Evan stopped cold, held his hand out. "Where?"

She passed the broom over and said, "The big beech tree by the lake."

Even if he hadn't know which tree she meant, he would have had no trouble finding the place. There were, indeed, people. Quite a crowd, in fact, with one head of long red hair that was at a distance but still clearly storming away from it. If they'd been laughing before, not many were, now. As he circled, Evan could see quite a few wooden or disturbed faces, some openly shocked. And in the middle…

Evan wasn't aware of pulling his wand out or casting the reductor curse, didn't think he'd meant to, certainly hadn't decided to. But there his wand was in his hand and there, on the ground, was Potter jerking his hand back and yelling in surprise, his own wand exploded into splinters.

"Sorry about that," Evan called down pleasantly, his wand casually and so-accidentally pointed right at his still-wanded cousin's heart. Pettigrew was sneakier and more vicious, but would follow Potter's lead. Sirius was faster, and wouldn't give Evan the warning of looking to anyone else for guidance. Or, necessarily, any more than he just had, of making any conscious decisions before acting.

He came to a rest hovering between them and the very still pool of shabby black robes and long white limbs he would have recognized anywhere. "Didn't mean to get your wand there, Potter," he went on, repentantly chatty. "I was aiming for Lupin's prefect badge. Since he seems to be tired of it. I'll pay for the replacement, of course, and I'm sure you can make one of your friends' wands work for you for the rest of the exams. Good thing they call us in fours for the practicals, isn't it? Everyone having a nice break before lunch, I hope? No trouble? I do hope there's no trouble; it would be such a shame to already be worked up before a DADA practical. Who knows what they'll throw at us? I'm so glad they give us a few hours of peace to clear our heads in, aren't you?"

Potter, a cut on his cheek, sized Evan up. He was mottled red and white with shock and fury, but the burbling had stopped him acting on his first impulses.

It tended to do that. Even Spike didn't just talk over anyone _before_ a conversation had devolved into an argument or brainstorming session. One looked all around before taking flight, and one let people finish talking. Traffic-control habits were strong.

Evan and Potter had both made Seeker at the same time. Evan had trained for a year first under his predecessor, but Gryffindor didn't have a solid reserve team. Apparently it didn't occur to them that it might be a good idea to give twelve-year-olds a few months' concentrated training in learning to dodge, or to keep one's substitutes well-practiced in case of illness, sabotage, the other team thinking they knew you, one of your players needing a reality check or some downtime...

Potter had been on the field since second year. In the scrum, too, Chasing. Then he'd just showed for his third tryout aiming for a new position when it opened, and gotten it. Since then they'd raced each other on the Quidditch pitch a few times, but weren't really acquainted apart from that. Evan had watched Potter, of course, but thought he'd probably been overlooked, himself. Fully aware that most people thought he walked around sleepwalking off the pitch, and of what Potter was like when he had an audience, he wondered absently if it would come to—

But no, Sirius was there, too. He might not care about odds either, but he wasn't the one who'd just been kicked in the fork and he knew Evan. He was stretching unhurriedly, working probably imaginary kinks out of his spine, his hand nowhere near his wand. "Absolutely," he said. What a good friend Potter had in him. It was touching, really. "Good for the soul, a bit of fun and sun between tests. Don't worry about the money, Evvie, accidents happen. Come on, you lot, if we send an owl right away, Ollivander might be able to get a new wand to Jamie's old specs in the mail by tonight."

"So awfully sorry about that," Evan said genially, giving every appearance of letting both _sun and fun _and _Evvie_ pass. "Of course it won't be the same." He thought he'd managed to look contrite, but it wasn't important at this point.

Potter glared, but let himself be turned away. He gathered up his hangers-on by pure force of expectation and pulled out his ever-present snitch to toss unconcernedly. Most of the crowd was already starting to edge away, leaving only silent baby snakes and a few grave blackbirds of the friendly variety.

"Siri," Evan called lightly but loudly before they'd gone very far. Sirius turned. "I never knew you lot were such dab hands at potions," he said for the benefit of the remaining watchers, still light and casual. The ones who hadn't left were mostly bright enough to catch his implication and realize what had already been done before today. The Severus-puddle had _far_ too much slender white leg showing. They had to be told. He wouldn't have wanted anyone to know, but he would want less to be asked questions or looked at in speculation. "It's important to be aware of what you don't know, don't you think?"

"Absolutely," Sirius said, and you would have had to know him quite well to hear the uncertainty, the prideful (ha) refusal to ask.

Evan landed when he was sure they weren't coming back. He knelt, checked for a pulse and took what felt like his first breath in hours when he found one. He hadn't _really_ thought they'd killed him, but all the same… It was irregular and encased in cold and clammy skin, but it was there. He rearranged Severus's robes carefully. There was... there was white stuff..

There were what had _K__issed well better be _Scourgify-suds frothing down Severus's chin, so it was quite a good thing, really, the Gryffindors were quite gone. Azkaban was probably unpleasant this time of year. He took care of that and looked up at the kids who were left. Some of them backed away a bit.

"Goldstein was going for help," Carrow tried to excuse them all, as if he hadn't been one of the few still smirking a little when Evan had flown down. Ev looked at him. He shut up.

"No one here was going to be able to out-draw the four of them, Rosier," Goldstein's brother said, meeting Evan's gaze without flinching. "Not even collectively. They have too much practice. Better to make sure there were witnesses who'd tell the truth if Becca came back with a teacher."

He nodded distantly, and continued to look around the ragged circle. One of the first-years who was always playing chess at Spike's elbow had a very wet face. "Lance," she gulped, "he wouldn't even let that other prefect help. He was really rude about it. He's always saying he'll skin us alive if we get ourselves involved."

This last, Evan knew, was true. He reached out, barely looking, and touched her shoulder briefly. She started crying again.

"He?" asked one of the younger (and, evidently, dimmer) Ravenclaws, who seemed mostly bemused by the whole affair.

"They slipped him a potion in the Three Broomsticks," Evan said, his voice distant even to himself. "He didn't want to waste study time on fussing when he could fix it himself in a few days." Most of the boys curled in on themselves a little, and there were no few incredulous faces. The Ravenclaws were all nodding as if that was a perfectly natural reaction, though, and the Slytherins eventually gave each other _well, we already_ _knew the cobra was crazy _looks. "And then," Evan went on, "they did… what, exactly, Goldstein?"

"They didn't hurt him," Goldstein said calmly, "but I think he'd prefer as few people know exactly what happened as possible."

"I'm not people." As he echoed Severus's words of only a few days ago, he realized how much his throat hurt.

"No," Goldstein agreed in a _no one wants to be a dead messenger_ voice, "you're a Slytherin holding a wand."

Evan looked at him. "So I am."

Giving in, Goldstein stepped closer and began to talk in a very low voice. Evan didn't kill him, or lose his breakfast, or snap his own wand in half from gripping it too tightly, or break down in front of the baby snakes. He just listened, kneeling over his unresponsive friend.

"I see," he said finally, nodding a little.

"Make sure no one ever speaks of this again?" asked Selwyn, the classmate of Reggie's that the first-year had been crying on, cracking her knuckles. She wasn't demonstrative or outgoing and Evan didn't know her well, but he knew she'd been getting Potions and Runes help from Spike, on and off. Misanthropes of the World Unite, maybe. Her heavy-jawed face had been one of the wooden ones from the beginning, and she had an unpleasant look in her small eyes that Evan liked very much.

"Oh, no," he said, light as a cool breeze and even smiling a little. There was some more stepping back, not from Selwyn. "No, no, I think all your parents and aunts and grandparents should know who thought it'd be good clean _sun and fun_ to strip a Slytherin girl upside down in public and spell things into her mouth. Or a boy they'd made a girl without his permission. Or just a Slytherin. They should know who thought they could get away with that if it was a Slytherin. Some confusion about which Slytherin might save lives," he added thoughtfully. There was some fervent nodding.

He looked around at them. A lot of them were awfully young. "If you don't want to be involved," he said more kindly, "that's fine. I'm sure my family will be very interested in all the details, whatever Dumbledore decides to believe and whether or not Slughorn takes an interest. My _whole_ family." Carrow nearly stepped back again: lovely. He didn't give it any obvious notice. "Someone will probably ask you without your volunteering. Just tell the truth, apart from who it was."

"Telling a truth is easy enough," Goldstein said, giving Evan's arm a pat as he stood. "Protecting an anonymous source isn't unheard of, either."

"House meeting after dinner," Evan told the Slytherins. "Make sure everyone knows. And don't go anywhere alone. There's probably nothing to worry about, but don't trust there isn't. Don't make trouble yourselves. Selwyn, go collect our Goldstein and see if you can get Madame Pomfrey to come out here, will you? I don't want to risk Naj waking up on a staircase, or in a crowd. Goldstein should be on her way back from the Astronomy tower."

He gave her Goldstein's broom and turned to the first year, who so far seemed more reliable than her big brother. "Blakeney, go with someone to find Slughorn. Tell him I'd like to speak with him at his earliest convenience, and ask when that will be. Before lunch, if possible. Give him a note if he's in class, but I want a response."

When they'd scattered, Evan moved Severus's head so his face was showing, and shuddered. If he hadn't had his fingers jammed into the shocky pulse the whole time, he would have thought he was looking at a corpse. Severus's eyes were even a little open, unseeing. Evan shook him, and he stayed where he was put. "You can get up," he said, without much actual hope, "they're gone."

No answer, of course. Evan put a warming charm on Severus's clothes and waited, counting heartbeats, for someone to come to him. It turned out to be Blakeney. She told him in a very fast voice that Slughorn's class would be over at quarter to twelve, stuffed a chocolate frog into Severus's pocket, and ran. Evan tried to find a smile for her, but wasn't sure his face had cooperated. He took the frog: its packaging would keep it from melting, but not from getting squashed.

Selwyn and Goldstein did eventually manage to bring him Madam Pomfrey, so it must have been a slow day. She wasn't happy, and was clearly about to tell Evan so in detail until she saw his face and looked farther down. Then she just took her wand out.

"The people who saw didn't mention any curses that would do this," Evan told her. He sounded stilted to himself, but it was preferable to what he suspected would happen if he let himself go.

"It can't have been spontaneous," the mediwitch said, staring at her wand, which was glowing a pink Evan hadn't seen before.

"Oh, that," he said. "That was a potion he got slipped over the weekend. He said the antidote would be ready tomorrow. I mean all this."

She frowned and waved her wand over Severus again, slowly, then shook her head. "It's not a curse, Mr. Rosier," she said. "Catatonia is something the mind does for itself. Has he done this before?"

"Not that I know about."

She looked at him kindly, and asked, "And you would know, I take it?"

"If it had happened at school in the last three years I would, and probably before that, or you would. He doesn't talk about home."

With a nod, she asked, "Exam stress? It can take people in the most remarkable ways."

"No," he said, and hesitated. Then he told her, because she was the mediwitch and you told the mediwitch. You never knew what details would tell them how to fix things.

Asked unhappily if he was sure, he said, "I wasn't there, but the Ravenclaw who told me has a sister in Slytherin who likes him a lot. She's the one who came and got me." She looked like that hadn't answered her question (Hufflepuffs!), so he impatiently elaborated, "Sure enough for Ministry work."

She nodded again. "I should be able to wake him up, but it might not be wise. He's never been a very good patient, you know, and he needs his rest."

He looked down at Severus's waxy face. "Can he take the rest of his tests another time?"

"I've never heard of that being done," she said dubiously. "All the same—"

"However upset he is," Evan told her, "helping those toerags keep him out of his favorite classes next year will in no way make things better." Even if the teachers were reasonable about it, letting him muck up his permanent record would not be received well either. "I know letting him rest would be ideal, but he came here to go to school. For the school bits. More than most of us did."

"Really, Mr. Rosier, I'm sure the faculty would understand."

"Maybe," he allowed, stroking Spike's hair back. "But he wouldn't."

She was quiet for a moment, watching him, then pursed her lips. It was, Evan thought, a sign that she was about to choose her words carefully. "If there's anyone who's particularly close to Mr. Snape…"

"What should I know?" he asked. It was nice of her to offer a Slytherin discretion. He appreciated it. Discretion could go hang: he'd used up all his patience not murdering Potter.

"Things like this can change people. He may be upset and unhappy for a long time. You'll have to be very clear with him about what you can handle. If he needs more than you can manage, don't try to be everything all on your own. He may be more prone to getting ill; the best thing is to see he looks after himself without putting a great deal of emphasis on it. Sometimes there are memory problems." She put her hand over his, where he was still clutching Severus's wrist, just for a moment. "And, dear, if he doesn't want to be touched, don't imagine it has anything to do with you. Or confuse a don't-touch with a go-away, or even wanting to be alone for a bit with wanting _to be alone_. It can get a bit tricky and difficult, not just painful, do you think you can manage?"

A blatant play to House pride; well done Madam Pomfrey. He nodded, but only hoped he was going to remember all of that. It was hard to listen usefully, and his throat was tight.

"As I recall," she said, "you're called in alphabetically to Tuesday and Thursday practicals? DADA today?" He nodded and she stood, drawing Severus off the ground with her wand. "Come with me to the hospital wing and I'll give you a note. If Mr. Snape is feeling up to taking it at all," she shot Evan a _don't encourage him_ warning look as they walked, "he can stay in bed until it's nearly his time. Perhaps he can go last. Most of the examiners are quite reasonable people, as long as one isn't cheating." There was a quirk to her mouth that suggested someone in her class had tried. Someone she'd disliked.

"I want to stay with him," he said, not asking. "I won't fuss, I'll just sit and do some work."

She pursed her lips in a different way. "We'll see."

Her renervate did pull Severus out of his stupor, more or less. He looked at her blearily, and then at Evan, and made a blurry interrogative noise.

"You don't have to get up yet," Evan said, squeezing his hand. "There's more than an hour till lunch." Severus mumbled something that sounded like _revise_, and Ev told him, "No, you know it cold, much better to have a lie-in, let it all settle." Before Severus could get his protest assembled, he threatened, smiling, "Don't make me bring Reggie over to come and look sad at you. I will, you know."

"All right, Rosier," Madam Pomfrey said with a grudging smile when Severus had made a face and drifted off into a more natural sleep, "you can stay."

"Is he going to remember what happened later?"

"Most likely."

"Possibly in public with massive explosions to follow?" He was counting on her having had a lot more exposure to Spike's temper than he had. Evan, at worst, saw him exasperated at the baby snakes or in one-notch-below-shouting matches with Mulciber, usually over Evans. _Pomfrey _saw him after real fights with people he was in passionately reciprocated hate with, long before he'd cooled down. Evan knew what it looked like, but even before they were friends he'd never gotten a face-full of it like she regularly did, probably not even that time Severus and Narcissa had gone at it in the common room. They'd both kept their wands holstered, and Evan was a hundred percent confident that even then Spike had known worse language than he'd been willing to scream at a little girl before she used it first.

She made another face. "Quite possibly. Particularly if something reminds him. Ordinarily I'd keep him here on a tranquilizing potion for a few days, until he's steadier, but Professor Dumbledore," she said disapprovingly, "has continued Professor Dippet's policy of allowing very little to interfere with exams."

"There's a potion he makes when someone's feeling particularly homicidal," Evan said, not mentioning that he himself took it before Quidditch matches. She might feel obligated to tell someone. "It doesn't affect your thinking or your reflexes, it just calms you down."

"Oh?" she frowned. "I don't think I've heard one like that, what's it called?"

"Er… That White Potion With The Silver Vapor," Evan said with an apologetic shrug. "We've collectively decided he isn't allowed to name things anymore. He uses puns the Ravenclaws groan about and no one else understands." Sometimes they were references only the muggleborn Ravenclaws groaned about, but they Did Not Speak Of That.

She looked extremely dubious. "I hardly think some experimental potion that hasn't been properly tested—"

That was when Narcissa blew in. "Evan, darling," she said, brittle with displeasure, her cornsilk hair shooting sparks, "when I said I didn't want to be disturbed…"

"Did one of ours tell you, or is it all over the school?"

"The school is fascinated but, I trust, extremely confused."

"If you agitate him," Madam Pomfrey warned her, "you'll have to leave."

"She won't disturb him," Evan said, holding his cousin's eyes. "She's going to sit and work with me."

"That's right," Narcissa told the mediwitch, instantly pleasant and well-behaved, although her hair still crackled ominously.

"I've scheduled some time with Slughorn before lunch," Evan told her as they settled at a table that had recently been covered with cloths and crystal rods. "I'm glad someone found you; one of us should stay with him."

"I'll handle dear old Sluggy, unless you want to," she offered.

He thought about it. "I'll go get Reggie and Goldstein to stay here first, and then we'll both go." She frowned, and he explained, "I've asked everyone not to be alone today. Meeting tonight, we'll work out what's to be done for the rest of term then. Goldstein doesn't bother him."

"Then you shouldn't go fetch them on your own," she pointed out.

It was a fair point, but he said, "I've got my badge for company. Besides, that lot's a wand down at least until tomorrow." She blinked a demand for more information, and he said, "Not here." Pomfrey might have to report something like that, and Evan didn't know whether her monitoring spells picked up sound or just things like pulse and heartbeat. She also might throw them out if Narcissa made a gleeful noise and Spike woke up.

Narcissa read the first letter he wrote and nearly exploded. She took a deep breath and started on her own stack, following his pattern. They worked quietly until eleven-thirty, and then Evan left her to it. He went back to their dorm, shaking off all questions with a reminder that they were meeting after dinner. He fetched the potion, then went to track down Reggie and Goldstein and tell them exactly when to, if necessary, imperio Spike into drinking it.

Goldstein laughed uncomfortably, as if she hoped but didn't think he was joking. Reggie looked cowed at the idea of using an unforgivable in the castle.

He fixed them both with his eyes, and asked, "You remember Halloween, your second year? Remember the fire? Do you know why the levitating charm is hard in your first year, even if you're doing it perfectly? It's because a wizard's magic gets stronger as he grows."

They took this in, and then Reggie asked, "But we could confund Madam Pomfrey first, right?"

"Or just use Naj's muffling charm," Goldstein added, not asking.

"That goes without saying, kitten," Evan told Reg, not unkindly. What he would have to do to avoid being made Prefect next year was beyond Evan's ability to imagine, given his family and Slughorn's other options, but sweet Circe. "Go tell Narcissa I'm waiting by the dungeons."

He let her take the lead with Slughorn, because their Head of House did have a distinct weakness for pretty girls who were clever enough to play the game and make much of him (or sweet enough to do it on instinct): he knew they'd go far, as well as enjoying their company. Evan flattered himself he was quite pretty and well-connected enough to be a lesser weakness himself, but it was still better to let Narcissa take point. Sluggy went to lunch tutting and looking concerned and thoughtful, but even the two of them together couldn't get him to put his authority behind the safety measures they'd be coming up with for the evening's meeting without being there.

He hadn't pressed for the details they hadn't volunteered, or left the impression that he might bring the matter to Dumbledore. Neither of them was surprised, or even disappointed. Slughorn could be a grand old ally in his own way, but he didn't like to be involved in unpleasantness. No matter how much he liked you, you didn't expect him to fight for you, or on your side, or for your cause. If he didn't support your opponent, that was all and everything and enough, in the long run. Like cutting off an army's supply lines.

Back in the infirmary Reg and Goldstein were hanging on Severus's arms, trying to drag him away from the door. He didn't seem to notice that he was having trouble, just kept moving.

"And where are you off to, darling?" Narcissa asked, keeping it reproachfully playful.

"I have to go explain," he said, sounding perfectly reasonable until you looked at his unfocused eyes. "She's forgotten all her elemental theory. We _talked_ about it. In Runes."

When it became clear that no one else knew what he was talking about, either, Evan said, "But you're not supposed to tell her _now,_ Spike." Severus looked uncertain, and he pressed his advantage, moving in to peel his friend off the fourth years. Severus swayed into him obligingly enough, although he was still leaning towards the door as though someone was holding a summoning charm on him. "She'll be revising over lunch for the Defense practical." Right? If he'd had Runes with 'her,' 'she'd' have 'her' Defense exam with them? "That's what we're supposed to be doing. It took the Shieldtail a lot of maneuvering to get us a nice, quiet room. You don't want to waste all her work, do you?"

"No," Severus agreed, drawing the word out in confusion but looking appropriately appalled. Narcissa (they'd eventually settled on that most beautiful and elusive of snakes for her Slytherin name, because she sorted all her problems so subtly she never seemed to have any) could be imaginatively punitive when her efforts were insufficiently appreciated.

"Why don't you two stay," Evan suggested, turning to the fourth years. "You can quiz us; it'll let you know what you're up against for next year." Besides, Reggie's terrified eyes were always an invaluable weapon when Spike was set on something that was a terrible idea.

The elves were happy to oblige them, although it took Severus a long time to seem to understand the idea of eating. He got sharper the more they asked him questions, though, and by the time the bell tolled the end of lunch, Evan was reasonably sure he'd be able to sit the exam.

When she came back from the Great Hall, Madam Pomfrey agreed. She sent the note for the examiners off with Narcissa; there'd be plenty of time between Black and Rosier for her to come back after her own exam and tell them no allowances would be made. Evan sent the fourth years with Narcissa, too. His cousin could take care of herself, but she was his fellow-prefect and should be setting an example. And they might be able to bring a message back.

They did. Professor Marchbanks had said it wouldn't do to have anyone who'd already taken the exam see students who hadn't to tell them when to come, but she gave them a time late in the afternoon. Severus was starting to realize that something was strange by this point, but Evan kept firing questions at him from all the subjects they had left until he forgot (which was convenient but hurt to watch), and then read History notes at him until he fell asleep again.

Evan whimsically thought about being hurt by that. Spike didn't fall asleep for Binns, hadn't even when he'd been walking around drowning last month. He had a quill in his hand in class, of course, and the chairs weren't terribly comfortable. And when one thought about comfort, well, it was quite as easy to take it the other way.

* * *

* As smarter people than me have previously noted, the name _sectumsempra_ translates (or can be translated) as _sever forever._ This can be read as a shout-out to its creator, or as meaning that what it cuts (like George's ear) can never be re-attached, or that it's a blade that will always cut _something_ when it's cast, or that it will just always cut. As in, will never get blunt, due to not being physical. As different smart people have pointed out, Rowling regularly commits jokes like a probably-somehow-magical version of Scotch tape/cellotape called Spellotape, and there's a brand of knife called Staysharp.

Puns are IMO one of the _highest_ forms of humor, because they're one of the few kinds that aren't mean. This does not mean groaning and cringing aren't called for and, indeed, obligatory.

I've given sectumsempra its particular properties because, as described in canon, it absolutely does not cut indiscriminately. Although Draco was ripped open 'like a sword' and fell in a faint, this is no indication he took any serious damage: Draco is consistently very badly thrown when forced to face physical vulnerability, and especially frightened and flustered when physically hurt. And while we saw that Snape had to do some fancy enchanting to heal Draco, George's ear suggests that this was a counter to the cut's permanence rather than to deep damage. The spell didn't hurt James much, in a situation where its caster was furiously out of control and was unlikely to have been intentionally modulating its intensity (unlikely, though not impossible, as it wasn't just a Slytherin but a proto-quadruple-agent naturally-occluding polymath). Most tellingly, sectumsempra was ineffective against Inferii when Harry REALLY REALLY wanted them cut down. So either it only does superficial damage (making it a spell of distinctly limited utility) or the kind of cutting it does is controlled in some way other than the caster's emotions or intentions.

* * *

**Notes: **Why was Severus given that potion last chapter, to still be under it now? Because some things are not made better by being male. A male victim does not make them okay, and _certainly_ doesn't make them funny. No one should be under the impression that what happened under the beech tree was any less traumatizing than it would have unquestionably have been. Cultural stories about gender can get in the way of that understanding.

**Just for the record**, we are not at home to arguments over how bad given actions are or how badly it's reasonable for anyone at all or for strong people to be affected by them. OTOH, there will be further discussion in this story arc about the intersection of individual psychology, trauma, and the mind-magics, and that conversation is awesomesauce.

**a potentially useful bibliography for the interested  
**starred ones are both totally accessible; not dense at all; and IMO very relevant to many many people

_Humiliation, _William Ian Miller  
_* Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them,_ David Anderegg  
_The Macho Paradox:_ _Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help,_ Jackson Katz  
_Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty,_ Roy F. Baumeister,  
_* You can't SAY that to me! Stopping the Pain of Verbal Abuse:_Suzette Haden Elgin  
_The Case Against Adolescence__: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen:_ Robert Epstein  
_The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,_ Philip Zombardo (of the Standford Prison Experiment)  
_* Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men_, Michael Kimmel


	7. June 10: Afternoon

At Hogwarts, nothing is allowed to interfere with OWLs. Thursday afternoon, after James has had his fun and Lily has stormed off, Severus still has to take his Defense practical. Too much to ask? _Riddikulus!_

* * *

**A/N**: Sorry, fell off the net again. Things have been busy and awful. OTOH, Evan got more his-kind-of-Slytherin during the obsessive rewrites, so there's that.

A reviewer mentioned a doubt that Severus would, with this much support in his school years, turn into the bitter, angry Snape Harry reacted badly to in PS/SS. This was an excellent question, and one I shouldn't wonder if other readers weren't asking more quietly, as it was a concern I've had in mind from the beginning. So I wanted to address it publicly. Here goes:

No, he certainly wouldn't... all other things being equal. But they aren't: there's a war between now and then, and **even unmagical war changes people all the time (and the VA needs all the help it can get and more**). And, after the war, a lot of years of teaching teenagers who don't want to be there, which is pretty darn wearing in its own way for a skinless introvert. But, yes, while in a way I wish this was a happy, fluffy AU story-arc where Severus has the sense to do his apprenticeship in Hong Kong or Switzerland... the war is going to happen, and Harry will shrink from Professor Seventhousandbuttons Snarlyface on schedule.

But not in _this_ title.

* * *

Professor Marchbanks had put them in the last group to be examined, with a couple of Hufflepuffs. Her jovial, "Snape, is it? Feeling better, are you?" was far too loud to be believable as a normal product of her wizened old body, suggesting she couldn't hear herself properly. She seemed to be able to hear other people all right; pity whatever spell she was using for deafness didn't work for her own voice. But then, Spike said Flitwick said people never did hear their own voices as others did. Which explained a lot about Avery.

"What?" Severus blinked, swaying a little. Evan was _fairly_ sure the white potion hadn't made him worse. It had been a necessary precaution: all the possible outcomes if they'd run into Potter or his lot without it had been too horrible to contemplate.

"Exams, Spike," Evan told him, gently firm, unhurried. "The professor is going to test you now, and you have to be amazing or Narcissa will eat your feet."

"Why my feet?" Severus asked him, still blinking.

"So you can't run away when she goes for the rest of you."

"Ahhh."

"So you have to focus."

"Focus," he repeated.

"Right now," Evan tried.

Severus paused. Something shifted in his eyes. "Time to work," he said experimentally.

"That's right."

"Right." He nodded, and then he really did seem to come into focus. Evan was bemusedly impressed, but also quite worried for a moment. If he both focused and remembered right now… but no, he was turning to Marchbanks. "Afternoon, Professor. You were my Charms examiner, I think?"

"That's right, that's right," she bellowed genially. "All ready now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, no," Evan groaned. "Spike—general counter for nonverbal magic?"

"Finite venanum," answered his dyed-in-the-wool swot, promptly and correctly.

"…All right, then," he sighed, crossing all his fingers and his toes as well, and crossed over to his own examiner. It wasn't a hard one if you knew Latin, but at least it proved not _all _Severus's ley lines were tangled. "Afternoon, Professor Tofty. Sorry about the fuss."

Tofty was peering at Severus in concern over his pince-nez. "Not at all, not at all, but ought your friend to be out of bed?"

"Absolutely not." This was evidently not the expected answer, so he elaborated, "There isn't enough no in the whole world. He's doing it anyway."

"Oh, dear. Well, I daresay Professor Marchbanks can look after him."

Evan thought more investigation and perhaps protest would have been called for there. But it was a respectful answer. It was a level of respect perhaps more appropriate to of-age than sixteen, but sixteen was close and one did only get one shot at the OWLs. And, although Tofty didn't know it, Spike would bite anyone he caught coddling him. Hard.

Tofty consulted his clipboard. "Now, let me see. ...Oho! Rosier!"

"Yes, sir?"

The old wizard's eyes, under the overgrown grey brows, were a pleasant, twinkly sort of hazel that made Evan think of mossy oak. Mostly green umber and sepias, flecks of cinnabar green light, maybe mixed with cobalt yellow lake? "Extraordinary thing… I examined a boy earlier who said he was having to use his friend's wand because someone named Rosier had broken his own this morning."

"Really?" Evan asked, blinking in surprised disbelief. Asking for consideration because a borrowed wand might not work well for him was perfectly reasonable, but naming names made it Telling Tales. Not Done.

Also, since Evan and Narcissa could quite possibly get him expelled by Monday if they decided to dig their heels in and risk an extended-family war, Not Smart. The ripple effect would be more of a tsunami, even if the family decided to count Cousin Dorea and her son _and_ Sirius a dead loss; the Potters were Somebodies in their own rights, had allies of their own. Severus had been right in the library. Fantasies aside, they weren't irresponsible enough to throw the wizarding world into civil war. But if they were more shortsighted or pettier, he'd be finished West of the USSR and North of the Nile, blackballed from all the wand-shops (that were any good, at least), just done. If he didn't know it, he was an idiot. If he was gambling that they wouldn't, he was _evil._

No, wait, back up, deflate, cool down, Do Not Go Black In Front Of An Examiner. Potter didn't know they cared. Spike had made sure of that. He'd kept his shadow off their reputations and made sure no one thought they could be used against him, had stuck in public to people who would have been getting in trouble with or without him. Potter probably thought Evan had just been taking an opportunity to get in a potshot at Gryffindor from under the cover of his badge. Or was too pride-stricken to think straight. Either way, naming names was still infantile.

Maybe he'd take a lesson, when he cooled down himself. Watch and see. For now, Evan sighed in perfectly genuine pained resignation. "I expect he was a Gryffindor, then. The interhouse tension's gotten a bit excessive lately; they do like to make trouble. I try not to get involved, myself. As it's said, he will win who knows when to fight and when not to."

"Aha, you've read your classics!" Tofty chortled. Evan hypothesized that he either liked everybody and thought kids and their squabbles were darling or hadn't liked Potter at all.

Ev hadn't so much read _The Art of War_ as suffered through Severus fanatically committing it to memory, but that wasn't the sort of information one volunteered.

"Of course you'll have had your ethics section on the written exam," Tofty went on, flipping to the back of his clipboard, and slanting a shrewd twinkle at Evan, "but perhaps just one more question, for a bonus point, since the subject's come up. Under what circumstances do you think it would be right to break someone's wand, Mr. Rosier?"

"Well, Professor," he said thoughtfully, rocking back easily on his heels, "It would be an extreme sort of thing to do, but I'd say it might be called for during an unlimited duel or some other sort of life-and-death situation. Bad form coming from the challenger, of course, in a duel, although unlimited is unlimited. Or if you came across someone, say, who already had another wizard on the ground, unarmed, outnumbered, and unconscious, and didn't look like he or his mates were about to stop. Then it might be a quick way to contain the situation. Take a weapon out of operation, shock everyone out of mob mentality before anyone crossed into Azkaban-worthy territory, that sort of thing."

Tofty had been scribbling down his answer. Finishing, he looked up, but not at Evan. Ev followed his gaze to where Severus, still looking blinkish and owlish and frankly rather drugged, was holding a protego steady against a whip of fire Marchbanks was lashing at him. "I see," he said sadly, and Evan hoped with unaccustomed viciousness that he did.

Then he turned back to the front of his clipboard, and smiled at Evan. "Well, then, Mr. Rosier, shall we get on with it? Wand out, please."

By the time Evan had finished demonstrating his counterjinxes, wards, and shields (_so_ much easier than writing about them), the two Hufflepuffs had each emerged from behind a black curtain, looking shaken. However, Marchbanks and Severus, respectively laughing delightedly and glittering with rapt animation, were still shooting spells at each other. Severus was surrounded by fallen arrows and his hair looked a bit singed. Marchbanks's tiny boots had been glued to the floor by thick build-ups of quickly melting ice, and her robes had a heavy, leaden look. Which was _not_ a nice thing to do to a witch of her age, given how shrunken she looked: the same callous respect Tofty had shown Spike. Neither of them were talking. As Evan watched, Severus started to shrink, but he was back at his current not-quite-full-size in an instant.

That might have disturbed him, given the week he'd had. In any case, it was at that point that he slashed his wand twice in quick succession. He very nearly got her wand with the expelliarmus, too, she was so surprised by his toenail spell.

Which, of course, was the point of it. The hack-and-slash _no more reaction time for you, Sparky_ rain-of-hexes technique Spike and Narcissa favored when they were done playing with their food was inefficient, to Evan's way of thinking. They both had enough raw power and quick imagination to get away with it, and Evan recognized that his bias was informed by how bad a fit it would be for him. Still, it _wasn't_ efficient, or elegant. Showy. Fun to watch, and they did seem to enjoy themselves, but wasteful. Ev had to give them this, though: other than Spike's sworn enemies, two-to-four on one, they got no repeat challengers.

"Seen all you need to, Griselda?" Tofty asked loudly in amused alarm. Evan was so, so glad to have gotten the sane one who didn't even offer students duels for bonus points.

"Oh, I suppose, I suppose," she bellowed back, cheerfully regretful as she clipped her nails and mended her boots and robes. "Well done, young man! Haven't had so much fun in ages! That your own spell?"

"Yes, Professor," Severus said, lowering his wand but not putting it away or taking his eyes off her, which made the examiners laugh.

"He'd made that one up by second year," Evan told them, trying not to sound too obviously like he was showing Spike off. She would have been throwing her punches, of course, barely hitting him with love-taps, and not just because she'd been doing this all afternoon. Still, it was amazing what Spike could handle, he thought, when it didn't come in spite.

"I only converted the wandwork for nonverbal casting last month, though," Severus said. That would have been modesty, false or otherwise, from almost everyone else: from him it was a prosaic offering to the gods of accuracy. "I was doing a lot of conversion then."

To make Spike tell them he'd had the choice, since this was the Defense OWL, Ev asked, "Why didn't you use your tongue-locking hex?" He'd apparently left his subtlety in bed that morning, or possibly up the Astronomy tower.

Severus stared at him. "You don't stop someone from talking in a duel if you know they can cast silently just as easily. If they want to tell you what they're doing, you let them." Evan grinned at him, and couldn't stop himself from giving the examiners a smug look. Severus looked thoroughly confused, and not wrapping him up and kissing him between the eyes was quite difficult.

"Very good, very good," Tofty chuckled when Marchbanks had had Severus demonstrate. "Just one more thing, boys. Let's return to the alphabetical, I think. Step through here, Mr. Rosier."

Evan stepped behind the curtain obediently, and then groaned at the sight of the wardrobe. Well, he'd had plenty of time, over the years, to think about what might make a white peacock look ridiculous. Anything might, really, so long as it didn't charge at him and shriek. Which, of course, it would.

He brightened. Maybe if he concentrated very hard he could put the boggart in McGonagall's favorite plaid. Or rainbow colors. Rainbow-colored plaid! And make it trip over its feet and do a pratfall on its tail and warble Sirius's Godric-awful muggle 'pink rocks' music or whatever it was. Yes, that should do it nicely. Lots of pink. But not Siri's music. That warbly caterwauling Spike had been mocking in the store.

_Oh,_ he thought in distant shock when the wardrobe opened._ Have I grown up, then?_

There were no peacocks, flocked or giant or at all. There was no pink, no color that really qualified to be called color. Lots of muddy, grayish sepia. Where the walls and curtain had been, he seemed to see a leaden sky, cloudless, sunless, graceless, endless, stretched out dully into a flat horizon. The landscape, if you could call it that, was broken by perfectly symmetrical, creepily featureless marble busts on pedestals. There was one right next to Evan. It had dust on it, a thick layer, as white as the statue.

The whole affair made his skin crawl violently, and not just because he felt suddenly as cold, stiff, and torpid as a snake in winter. He realized sharply how long it had been since lunch, and the air seemed thin, somehow.

Next to him, Tofty seemed startled. Probably most people their age still got things like peacocks and spiders.

Evan raised his wand falteringly, but his mind was a blank. There was nothing funny about this. How could you fight a dead world? Give him anything to move and he could move it where it ought to be, or at least try, but this was just… just nothing. Even the statues were nothings. He gave one a push, to see if it was even there. His hand went through it, just like a ghost, but without the bone-numbing chill that told you you were touching something real.

Maybe this was how Spike had lived all the time, those silent few weeks last month. Certainly fighting everything wrong with the world all the time Spike's thing far more than his.

He relaxed suddenly. Of _course_ it was. He cast, "_Riddikulus_," in a strong voice, confident with relief. A tiny, winged, black and white cobra (he hadn't intended wings) burst out the statue next to him as the spell forced the boggart to mold to his will instead of his fear.

The little serpent hovered warily, regarded the landscape in massive offense, and then started spitting indiscriminately. Where the venom landed it spread, the grey mudscape dissolving into mad colors: a jarringly bright chaos, but still so much better than the muck. The transformation didn't seem to be going fast enough for the snake. It struck at the sky and started chewing it up viciously, shaking itself like a cat's tail, terrier-like in its stubborn enthusiasm.

A second snake followed it, much larger, pale grey under a vibrant, iridescent sheen. It neither bit nor spat (shieldtails weren't venomous, as far as anyone knew), but simply slithered along, giving the too-bright colors pitying looks until they abashedly resolved into elegant, fanciful gardens. Evan looked up, and found that the cobra had bitten the sky all blue and stars (as if you could have both at once if you wanted, why not?), and bent the Milky Way into a really self-satisfied smirk.

He laughed aloud, full of glad and already plotting out the triptych. Even if no one else would understand it. The summery warmth of the classroom faded back into view to the slam of the wardrobe's door.

"Well, that's that," Tofty said, giving him a pleased and kind smile and checking off a box on his clipboard. "And once Mr. Snape has had his go, we can all go in to dinner."

Evan's stomach turned to lead. Well, of course Mr. Snape would be expected to have his go, what had he thought? If those two badgers and Evan had all had to do this, then naturally. "Ah," he said. "He's… that's not really a good idea, he's had a _really difficult morning_. He wouldn't even be out of the hospital wing, ordinarily."

"What are you _talking_ about," Severus half-queried in annoyance, stepping past the curtain. "I'm taking the test; I'll take the damn test."

"No, very bad idea," Evan gushed urgently, like a cut throat, but the wardrobe was already swinging open. Tofty gently pushed him back to the edge of the curtain. He wouldn't go farther.

Then, "But that's mine!" Tofty declared, astonished. It was the foulest bed Evan would never have cared to imagine: covered with cobwebs and dust, reeking of stagnation, sickness, and decay. There were things _moving_ in there. It was _breathing,_ one might almost say, exhaling waves of stale and unhealthy odors.

Tofty waved his wand in a perplexed sort of way, leaving it clean and brightly colored and entertaining them all with (Evan winced) jolly, dischordant, whistling, quilt-bouncing snores. He stepped back, right next to Evan.

The boggart turned into a vampire who, while not unappealing in a nondescript _you will never notice me in a crowd _sort of way, was in no way charming or romantic. It had a muggle 'suit jacket' on over its trousers, a poor excuse for an overrobe that stopped far too far above the knees to be decent. Going about in shirtsleeves was one thing, but an overrobe that, er, didn't go over... Lockhart was a fan of the tightly-tailored horrors, and Slytherin had to admit he and Wilkes looked amazing in them, but in a very _dirty_ way. Wilkes understood that; Lockhart didn't quite understand the line between charmingly-naughty and _really do not wear in public at all ever_ when no skin was actually bared.

The vampire didn't look naughty. It looked businesslike, like it was wearing really-truly robes and might turn up at the Ministry to be boring at people. Evan could only tell it was a vampire, not a muggle, because it was literally parchment-white, pulsed a cold, subtle menace, and smelled of damp stone and old blood.

He pulled his wand. Domestic and captive boggarts were often reasonably well behaved, but they were still, like Dementors, Dark creatures who fed on emotion. They took on the form and substance of what people's fears made them. Boggarts in the wild had killed people before, and not just by chasing them off cliffs or into Muggle traffic. This one wouldn't be able to give anyone the vampire's curse, but it would certainly be able to bite bloody holes into their necessary arteries.

Marchbanks' _Riddikulus!_ left the boggart rather cartoonish-looking as it backed back into the wardrobe, nervously smoothing back a deep widow's peak and twitching back a red-velvet lined cloak, apologizing in a heavily accented and very squeaky voice for bothering a nice old lady like herself who couldn't hev hed any blaad in her anyvay, he maast hev hed the direeections upside down…

The examiners looked at Severus curiously. "You're not one of those people who doesn't get afraid, are you?" Tofty asked with interest.

Spike laughed _far_ too loudly, high-pitched. Well, for him. Even considering. When he saw they wanted a verbal answer he said, emphatically, "No." Then, frowning a little, he added, "But I don't seem to remember what it feels like at the moment."

They seemed to come to the same conclusion at once. "That girl," Marchbanks bawled in exasperation. "Thinks all her ickle chickies are made of spun sugar. I suppose you had a cheering charm or a potion in the hospital wing, Mr. Snape?"

"I was given a potion," Severus agreed obediently, looking a bit alarmed because of how intently Evan was glaring _do not say by whom_ at him. This ordinarily wouldn't have needed clarifying, but he wasn't at all sure what Spike's mental state was at the moment.

Or his own. He'd been an idiot. Severus had needed the potion, needed it medicinally, but giving it to him against medical advice might look to the professors like cheating if they found out. This was the Defense exam, after all, and working through fear was part of defense. And that had never_ occurred_ to Evan. Narcissa Must Never Know.

"Right before his _DADA_ OWL," Marchbanks said at a normal volume, which probably meant she thought she was muttering under her breath. "Well, there's no help for it, Mr. Snape, it'll have to come off. _Finite venanum_."

Spike yelped and shot up a few inches, his face shifting harder and his shoulders broadening until his robes actually fit. He started clawing at his back. After the first surprise Evan, moving forward to help with the chest band, murmured, "Welcome back," into his ear.

He had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he'd had lingering-goodbye plans for Spike's last night with those sweet, sensitive little breasts, that extra-wicked spark he'd been glinting up at Evan, that _lemonade out of lemons is for amateurs and Hufflepuffs_ smirk. He also, only partly selfishly, didn't want Spike to associate that body with this morning, and wasn't sure whether getting him out of it almost at once was going to be a help there or not.

On the other hand, it was _really good_ to have him looking and smelling completely himself again. That woody smell in whatever it was he used hadn't worked very well with his altered pheromones. Much more importantly, having his height and heft back (among other things) and knowing that what had been displayed against his will wasn't what he had anymore might help him recover, once the memories hit him.

Spike looked at his hands, still long and fine but stronger than they were slender again, as though he might kiss them. A good idea, or at least a good start, thought Evan, who had missed his knuckles irrationally.

Then Spike looked up, indignant. "I _tried_ that," he told Marchbanks, sitting down to take off his extra socks and spell the extra height off his soles. "I tried that right away, must have been a dozen times, and it never worked."

Sounding himself again, too. Evan did not descend on him to suck at his throat and feel the vibrations of his deeper-again voice. Since there were people in the room. It might be disturbing for them after the vampire, after all. Evan was a very restrained person. He considered the ethics of giving Slytherin points for his thoughtfulness and decorum.

Instead, he said to a shocked Tofty with a sigh, "I told you interhouse tensions had been getting silly. They got him this weekend." He nearly laughed when Tofty's legs twitched, just like most of the boys' had yesterday.

"Benefits of being healthy as a horse and older than dirt, boy," Marchbanks was cheerfully yelling. "Try it again in even five years, you'll see."

"Why was it the draught that I took first that dissipated?" Spike asked, interested. "That was the one that wasn't a temporary effect. Was it because I didn't want it? My subconscious directing the magic? Or is the canceling spell less concerned with effects that'll end on their own?"

"Could be because you didn't want it, or is there any chance that potion wasn't as well made as the other? A weakness in the making is a weakness for the taking!"

Severus snorted. "God, yes." Evan chewed down a smile. No, Spike wasn't a boaster, but false humility was definitely not his thing either.

"Either way, it's the other one you can't keep. Off it comes!"

Too fast! Evan took a quick step towards Spike, but he didn't explode all over everybody. He did lose color, and stopped trying to stand up. His hand rose to splay absently over his heart, rubbing as though he didn't really notice what he was doing. "I think that was contraindicated," he said faintly, and bent down to put his head between his knees.

Evan sat down next to him and started rubbing his back slowly. "All right, Naj?"

"Feel a bit sick," Severus choked out.

"Breathe." He made his voice as soothing as he could manage. "Deep as you can. Nice and slow. You've just got to do this one thing, and then you can have another dose."

Severus was silent.

"I know you," Evan told him, dropping the soothing tone in favor of fond amusement. Confidence would tell Severus there was something he needed to be confident about. "You get in prefects' faces when they're two feet taller than you and your ribs are cracked toffee. You've scored goals with one eye and your arm half off. You've got every Black who knows you treating you with more respect than we give most purebloods, love you or hate you, and we're all terrible, terrible snobs, Spike."

"Never. Impossible. Proposterous," Severus muttered.

Evan kept rubbing, talked over him as though he hadn't snarked. It was the only way to deal with him, really. "You've kept Mulciber from setting Avery on you or going after your muggleborn friend for three years, even though you argue politics with him to his face." _You go home and come back every summer, _he thought_, and won't let anyone help you when you're outnumbered four to one. _"You made the _Tartan_ let you into Arithmancy, for Salazar's sake," he smiled, tucking a private little chuckle under Spike's hair, and gave his friend a who-do-you-think-you're-kidding shoulder-bump. "You can take a stupid boggart."

Severus lifted his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. "I defeated that boggart before I fought it," he said to Marchbanks, with a mulish jaw. "If you recognized Sun Tsu," he turned to Tofty, " then maybe you know this one: You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. Divorcing oneself from fear is a perfect defense against a boggart. It didn't even know I was there."

_Points to Slytherin,_ Evan thought, rather surprised, _for trying to talk your way out of trouble for once. _This, unlike his wry self-congratulation on the subject of baseline decorum, was a case he really would make to Slughorn later. If Prefects could give points as well as take them and then account for it later, the Great Hall hourglasses would have exploded years ago.

"And I'll give you a bonus point for identifying the tactic in hindsight," Marchbanks told Severus, patting him briskly on the shoulder (she nearly had to reach up), "although it you'd done it on purpose I'd have had to call it a cheat. You're being tested on the boggart-banishing _charm._ Of course, if you want to take a zero—"

Spike was on his feet and moving to the wardrobe at once, giving her a respectful and toned down version of his patented venomous glare. Evan had wanted to kick old ladies plenty of times before, because he had a few choice relatives and because he'd been exposed to a great many fractious clients of his father's. Never one that was, objectively speaking, quite nice (if noisy), before, though.

It wasn't just Severus who yelled when the door opened; Evan heard his own loud startlement as well. The room seemed suddenly choked with musclebound giants, and the fug of sweat and stale beer.

Evan recognized a caricature of Potter, and there was something unrecognizable that smiled with engaging shyness and leaped for Spike's throat like a sabre-tooth vampire. Most prominent was a figure that flickered back and forth from some caveman-like parody of Severus and someone thicker and broader-faced, with less neck and forehead and much paler, yellowish-brown eyes. It had clubs for hands, and smelled the worst. Avery and Mulciber were both represented, and lithe little Bast Lestrange with a nasty-looking knife and a nastier grin, and a few of the older Slytherins, some graduated. There were others, less clearly defined. They descended on Severus in swift and violent silence.

There was an Evan-like thing, too, Ev saw, not so much disturbed as yanked and knotted. It and its stiletto sort of tripped onto Spike more than dove at him. This was actually not funny in the least. It had dead-ice eyes and a doll's empty smile. _Huh, _Evan thought distantly, chilled. _Sa__me as mine, really._

He heard the snarled, "_Fuck you all riddikulus!" _Then the room was empty again.

Nearly empty. A small frog blinked harmlessly from the middle of the floor. Then a bare foot about the size of Hagrid, his hut, and his dog put together descended from the ceiling and squished it before disappearing. Instead of a slamming wardrobe door, there were frog guts splattered on the floor. The wardrobe couldn't have slammed, being in splinters.

Unexpected, certainly, but Evan didn't see the humor.

Severus wasn't laughing, either. He was panting, white-eyed, the snarl still baring his teeth. He was badly bruised, and his shirt showed through great tears in his robes and jumper. With a shaking hand, he took a quill out of a pocket and transfigured it into a thick wooden stake, which he slammed through the frog-bedecked floor.

Then, while the examiners were still staring, he threw what looked like half a flask of water over it in three triangular splashes, and set it on fire. Green fire; it must have been saltwater. Evan groaned, although only inside his head. At least the Tentacula had been an accident—if anyone would believe that now. At least they'd gone last this time.

"Professors," Severus clipped off without looking at the examiners, with a brittle, even courtesy. "If we're done, I hope you'll excuse me. I'd quite like to go be ill now."

Evan rose, too, his face and chest both feeling hot and tight, and said, just as civilly, "It's worth considering that when someone says something's a bad idea, Professors, occasionally one might know what he's talking about. Goodnight."

He caught up with Spike in the boys' toilet, and was thankful it was closer than Myrtle's. Spike, it turned out, hadn't been exaggerating, and would probably have taken a broom closet if it had been on the way.

Ev cast the strongest this-room-is-unwelcoming charm he could, pulled the dark, sweaty hair back with a spare ribbon. He summoned water and went through Spike's bag for mint, rubbed his back and wet a cloth and did all the things one did. Held his hands tightly to keep his nails out of his arms and knees, healed his lip as soon as he'd stopped biting through it.

"We're having a House meeting tonight," he said quietly into Spike's hair when the shakes had died down to a steady rocking and Spike sounded like he was breathing almost normally again. "But you don't have to be there. You should be back in the Hospital Wing. I know you don't want to be there overnight—"

A choked noise, and a full-body flinch. Severus's hands tightened on him, hard.

"I know," he said, kissing behind his ear and holding tighter, "and I won't make you go, but you should let her look at you."

"I just got upset," Spike said thickly. "I'm… I'll be fine. She can poke me tomorrow. After Runes. The white stuff should keep me going until then."

"All right," Evan said. "But we'll be sending someone to bring back food from the kitchens. We're not having dinner in the Great Hall."

"No," Spike agreed, almost soundlessly. "Home now."

"This instant," Evan agreed. "Is your stomach settled?" He passed over the rest of the vial of white potion, and when Severus had swallowed did most of the work of creakily levering them up. "You've got an appointment with some purple goo."

People were heading for dinner, and quite a lot of them were shooting Spike fascinated and curious looks, variously morbid and variously veiled. He'd pulled himself together completely once they were in public, and barely condescended to flick the most obvious of them cool, disinterested glances. Much of that would be due to the potion. It probably helped, Evan thought grimly, that he still didn't seem to remember what they were curious about, except with his body.

"It's Grenade Balm," Severus said as walked down the hallway. "Being mainly pineapple."

"No," Evan said firmly, half-laughing, because that was what he would have done if nothing was wrong. He knew a terrible pun when he heard one, even when he didn't understand it. Spike had this haughty _your failure to comprehend the quiet hilarity of my joke reflects solely on the sad limits of your impoverished intelligence_ face. It was bizarrely kissable, although a bit threadbare today. "We've told you and told you: you're never allowed to name anything ever again. Incidentally, before I expire of curiosity, why a frog?"

"It was a toad. Toads are traditional."

It had definitely been a frog. "And the foot?"

"We haven't found anything that works better than the telly to keep Da quiet," Severus said, looking embarrassed. "I can't really help seeing it when I'm home."

"What kind of jelly?" Evan asked, frowning and genteelly ignoring the urge to ask, _toejam?_ Severus looked reluctant, but took the kind of deep breath that preceded very long explanations. With luck, this one would last until they could close the curtains.

* * *

Movieverse!McGonagall chased Snape out of the castle with a fire-whip in DH. I had a puzzled _that seems powerful but elementary_ thought (no pun intended).

**Chapter art** (link in profile): _You're never allowed to name anything ever again.  
_

And now for something completely different:

**Next: **Slytherins are, actually, Slytherins. They, like, plot and stuff.


	8. June 10: Evening

Houses exist to make it so no one has to go it alone because when you kick one of us _we are all insulted_ (whether we like him or not). Slytherins are, actually, Slytherin, and Horace has an eye out for his retirement.

* * *

**Warnings** for SLYTHERIN (I know, _finally,_ right?!). And snobbiness about fidgety habits.

Also lots of feels and what probably doesn't even qualify as kink by net standards these days, but more with the **nongraphic m/m**, anyway. There should be enough lead-up that you'll be able to stop in time if you want. Your slam-on-the-brakes red-light phrase is "watching your eyes."

**notes:** his is another chapter that my beta/britpicker's only seen the first draft of, about 4,000 words ago. The vast probability is that errors are my fault.

* * *

Evan was decreasingly happy with how docile Severus was being. When tested with a ridiculous request he gave Evan an uncertain look, and then an uncertain smile, and went back to his book. Otherwise, he was more or less doing what he was told. W_ithout snide commentary._ This was so unlike him that Ev had started wondering whether chewing one's nails was of any actual comfort in a time of trouble. It was such a repellant habit that surely the people who did it had to be getting something out of it.

Still, the tractability was convenient for the moment. Just as long as it didn't last long enough that anyone else noticed. Evan had taken advantage, telling him not to bother getting up yet: Ev would come let him know when everyone was there and it was time for the meeting to start.

Just about everyone was there, barring the seventh years. Evan had asked Narcissa to ask the sixth year prefects to get their year to turn up, but he didn't need people who were off their heads with test anxiety and last-second revising and weren't going to be around next year anyway. The sixth years probably wouldn't be of much use, either, but you never knew.

People were nervous, even the ones who seemed not to know why they were there. Formal meetings were vanishingly rare, and having Slughorn lounging around in the back of the room, chatting comfortably as though he meant to stay but not lead, was unheard of.

Evan paused in the doorway, made eye contact with Narcissa to make sure she was ready, and then with the sixth-year prefects to show that he hadn't forgotten the hierarchy and check that they were still amenable. This taken care of, he cleared his throat.

When the House looked up, he spoke clearly to no one in particular, for the first time. "The serpent that wants to help is the constricting colubrid called the Aesculapian snake, _Elaphe longissima_."

People were staring at him in surprise that wasn't terribly surprising. He didn't generally put himself forward. They were probably thinking that if a junior prefect was doing this at all, they would have expected it to be Narcissa. And, of course, that they thought they'd known what tonight would be about, and this wasn't it.

He gave them no mind and went on. "These snakes are surprising and secretive: they can climb up as well as get along. Known for their place on the Rod of Aesculapius, they have been used on the continent in wizarding healing rituals since antiquity. The Aesculapian snake would rather avoid trouble, and when cornered its first reaction is to warn, not hurt. Its threatening chewing display should not be taken as a bluff: this snake is one of the largest on the continent, when grown, and its bite will hurt, tearing an aggressor the more they move against it."

That last bit was a slight exaggeration. As it's Latin name suggested, the snake in question was a slender thing and didn't have the huge jaw he'd implied. It did have nasty, curvy teeth, though, and the important thing was what Blakeney took to heart about who she had it her to grow into. And, of course, what the House believed the prefects had seen in her.

He gave her a little smile (she squeaked), but kept an eye on her big brother, who hadn't been snake-named yet. He looked grumpy, but also glad for her. Probably nothing to worry about. Imminently, at least.

After a breath to let that sink in, for her to feel the House's smile, Evan said, "Most of you know why we've come together tonight, I think. How many of you have written home already, or mean to?" Far more hands than he'd expected opened in laps (they didn't shoot up; this wasn't Gryffindor), which was gratifying.

"Good. I'll say it again to everyone: this story should be known, but no one who doesn't want to put themselves in a front-lines position is asked to. Just tell what you know when you're asked, apart from who it was. No distortions. Don't make it sound worse than it was: if there's truth to any accusations of exaggeration, the story will be easier to dismiss. Besides," he added, his smile curling coolly at the corners, "that's hardly necessary. Don't get prideful and say it wasn't so bad, either: Slytherin won't help Gryffindor bury its shame. Just say what happened."

He took another breath, looking at Narcissa for a moment to steady himself. "Madam Pomfrey told me our cobra might have memory issues, and he's having them. She didn't say what spell was used," because she'd said that _no_ spell was used, "can't say if it's permanent, but at least for now I don't think he remembers this morning at all. I just wanted to say, before I tell him we've started—if and when he does, it's not going to be good. We'll deal with that then. Don't push it."

"I think what you meant, darling," Narcissa said gently, "is that anyone who jogs his memory is going to lose more than their sheddable skin. And not just because of his natural blast radius."

"Far be it from me to argue with a lady." Evan bowed a little with his hand to his heart and let the baby snakes giggle. Then he swept the room with his eyes again and asked in a tone that was still light, but harder, "Are we all clear on this?"

There was a quiet, ragged chorus along the lines of _Clear, Lance. _He nodded, satisfied, and went back to the bedroom.

Severus hadn't eaten any more of his dinner since Evan had left, but at least he hadn't banished it. He turned to see who was coming in, looking a little groggy but present, and tilted an inquiring eyebrow.

"Everyone's there now," Evan said, and held out his hand. When Severus was on his feet, Evan slipped his arms around him and just held on for a moment, despite the resulting bemusement. "Could use your brain, Naj," he said into Severus's collar, "but you don't have to come if you're not up to it."

Sometimes it was inconvenient, how skinny his friend was. He was all snap and presence and radiant heat in his threadbare clothes, and then Evan's hands would tell him _ribs, wrist, spine_. He wasn't fragile, he really wasn't. Evan _knew_ he wasn't. He just kept remembering all the times Severus had been hurting right in front of him, remembering the way he felt about it instead of the way Severus could just refuse to be interested. Severus was nearly of age, older than Evan even if he was a little smaller, and he was solid as the castle, really. It was just hard to remember that when Evan was holding him, telling himself _flyer's back, __brewer's arms, knows how to measure, knows what he's up for,_ and suddenly his fingers whispered _ribs, wrist, spine._

"It's House business; of course I'll come." Severus was matter of fact. Evan was going to make sure that peace drought got a nice, simple, catchy, easy-to-remember name that would not, _Spike,_ be offputtingly intellectual. Once someone bought the production rights it ought to sell right off the shelves, so long as its creator wasn't allowed to blow the advertising.

"All right," he said, reluctant to let go, "but if you start to feel off again you come right back and call an elf for some tea. We can fill you in later."

"Fuss," Spike disapproved.

Evan smiled, feeling steadier. "I'll fuss you," he said threateningly, and laid his mark in near Severus's bare vertebrae. Severus would think it was just to make him shiver, so that was fine, but anyone who wanted to break him would see their malice wouldn't go unnoticed.

This was nonsense. Besides, very few people would want to get to Spike's neck, as whatever he washed his hair with made him look more or less like he didn't (his toothpaste similarly needed to die in a fire after being repeatedly jumped on; clearly muggle products were shite and Spike should just _make his own_). It still made Ev feel better. And Secerus did shiver so nicely.

Narcissa had saved the rest of her sofa for them, and they settled next to her once she'd swung her long legs down. "This is a bit unusual," she said to the House at large, "so thank you all for coming." With a teasing glance at Severus, she added, "Eventually." He gave her a lofty look. She shook her head in mock-despair, squeezing his hand.

"Most of you already know," Evan said, "that we have a problem. For those who don't: the Gryffs have finally decided they can get away with attacking our people in public, with an audience. No subterfuge, no subtlety, no provocation."

"_What?" _Severus hissed, half rising.

"Sit down, darling," Narcissa said firmly. "This is a House matter and we're all dealing with it together." Seeing that he was tensely scanning faces, she added, "The person involved wants to retain as much anonymity as possible, Severus; stop that."

He duly sat back and got slightly less obvious about it. That potion seriously interfered with anger-formation, clearly, as well as fear and the sick sort of upset. Ordinarily he would have been vibrating with rage at this point, if not actually shouting.

"Since the incident did happen publicly," Evan went on, considering whether putting an arm around Spike's shoulders would make him suspicious and regretfully deciding that in a semiformal meeting like this it absolutely would, "everyone in the school who doesn't know about it yet will surely know by tomorrow. That's unfortunate for the person who was attacked, of course." He couldn't call Severus a victim to his face: he'd remember it later. "Still, we can use it. It means we can respond openly without anyone misunderstanding."

"And about damn time, too," Mulciber said, spinning his wand in his fingers. There was a ripple of agreement, and Selwyn cracked her knuckles. Slughorn took a breath, frowning.

"Stop that," said Severus sharply before he could speak, and got a lot of blinks from the Slytherins and a how-interesting-what-will-you-do-now look from their Head. "There won't be any chest-thumping. Are we serpents or gorillas?"

"We could be guerillas," Wilkes suggested, with a cheerful smile that was more condensed-panther than sex-kitten. Evan melted a little. He'd known she liked playing with Spike, and toying with him, and poking at him—but not that she _liked him._ _  
_

"Stop it, I said," Spike repeated irritably. "Lance, you said whatever this was happened in public. What was the reaction?"

"People stood around and laughed," he answered simply. That got through the potion, but although Severus went white around the eyes, he just took a deep, careful breath.

"Some Ravenclaws and some of ours stayed to bear witness," Narcissa added.

Evan got a sudden target-painted feeling from her, but why? He hadn't been supposed to _sugar-coat,_ had he? For _Spike?_ He'd never forgive them, once he worked it out, and it wouldn't take him long. No, he would forgive them, but he'd never trust them quite the same way again—not to believe in him.

But she always did want to. Maybe it was a girl thing. Or a _spent more time with Reggie growing up than Ev had _ thing. Reggie felt safe just knowing who was on his side, but Severus was never calmer than when he was sure he understood what he was up against.

"They thought they'd be overpowered, and apparently," Narcissa looked at Severus reproachfully, "the lower forms are under some sort of marching orders not to let themselves be involved."

"Only when it's me!" Spike cried, throwing up his hands and glaring around at all of them. A lot of people looked away hastily, because of course it had been. Fortunately, he mistook this for shame. "And this is why! They've tried to get the whole of both Houses involved before. A private fight that can't be ended needs to _stay_ private, or it turns into a blood feud that _doesn't end_ even when everybody's dead. That doesn't mean uninvolved parties get thrown to the wolves! Are you seriously telling me that you lot haven't been looking out for each other?" he demanded, glaring around more.

"Spike," Evan said quietly, taking his wrist and stroking below, with his thumb, where no one could see, until Severus was breathing air instead of steam again. "This isn't their fault. It's not your fault, either. I know," he added, for the benefit of anyone who might not be understanding his outburst properly, "how crazy it makes you to think about the drakelets getting hurt. But let's be clear-eyed, can we?"

"Probably not," he admitted, sitting back grudgingly. There were a few smiles, even one or two nervous giggles. Slughorn, Evan noted, had his hands laced over his belly and was looking keenly interested. That, er, should have been good? Only, Ev had never seen the old duffer look so... so nearly... it was hard even to think it about ol' Sluggy, even remembering he theoretically epitomized them, but he almost looked predatory. Come to think of it, what had his snake been? Would Dad know?

No—Slughorn had been Dad's Head of House, too. Salazar, the man must be, what, at least sixty? Seventy? Someone so relaxed wouldn't be wrinkle-prone... Maybe Evan should ask _Granddad._

Reg was twitching, clearly working himself up to talk. Good. Something else to look at. Do Not Get Caught Noticing Your Elders Plotting.

"Naj," Reggie said, frowning in an anxious sort of way, "um…" Evan looked at him encouragingly, Severus with restless agitation. "Look," Reg went on, taking a fast breath, "we're all upset too. It's not personal when it's public," he said, not really to Spike, "it's an attack on the whole House." There was nodding even from his roommates, although most of them had expressions that were more _hurrah, an excuse: fightin' time!_ than _how dare they! _

The exception was looking nobly wounded, and probably not really following. Or possibly was following but was also embellishing the facts in his beautiful and perfectly coiffed head with details that made everything terribly romantic, or spinning some impossibility that would make him a hero and everybody's darling tomorrow and would not actually happen except in his correspondence.

Probably that last one. Completely mental, Lockhart, but harmless, and often fun to watch. He had a proper Slytherin name by now (he insisted he was a _lavender_ corn snake if there wasn't a lilac one), but that was largely manners. When people called him the boa, they meant the feathered kind. Not because he was flaming (he wasn't, but one went away with the impression anyway), but because he was a birdbrain (not the kind Severus was) and no true serpent.

Unless he was a better one than all of them. In which case, well done him for a long, deep game well-played. That happened sometimes, but usually with the quiet ones. Gildylocks? Unlikely. Ambitious, in his way, but not cunning.

Reggie had been just-squirming under Spike's go-on look an awfully long time now. Evan shook himself, although of course not physically.

"What Reggie means, darling," Narcissa said helpfully, taking pity on their cousin, "is that, since this was an attack on us all, even if they didn't realize it was, we're not going to let it pass. So if attacking back is out, what _do_ you think we should do?"

Spike paused, pressing his lips together. "Give me a minute," he said. "I'm just hearing about this." He so clearly meant it that there was another ripple, this one equal parts disturbed and distressed-or-amused, depending on the who-from. "Oh, keep your hair on," he snapped, taking it all for impatience.

"Better ours than yours, Snape," Mulciber grinned. Spike bit his thumb at him, flicking up two fingers at the end for extra emphasis and very nearly hitting his own nose. It was the first time in months that Evan had felt like kissing Mulciber.

Or, he suddenly noticed, with a shock that physically jolted him, _anyone_ else.

And, he found with another shock, the realization didn't make him feel he'd been missing out and want to rectify the situation. It rather made him want to push Severus down over Narcissa's lap and bite him in the hollow of his throat in full view of the House, so that her wand would be there to point at anyone who had something to say about it.

Quite badly, actually.

Huh.

Well, maybe it wasn't too strange. You scoured the field, you looked for that standout, golden, glinting recklessness, you made sure you got your hands cradled secure around it before anybody else's filthy, careless mitts could crush its wings. Nothing else mattered much except not getting creamed. Other people were a bit dull, mostly, or too jagged-sharp in unhealthy ways. A Spike nuzzle was as good as afterglow with anyone else, and smelled better (_so much better_), and was more sort of tingly all over his skin and in his bones and warmly-settled-cool-bright-sparkling in his blood and magic and...

They were having a meeting. One they needed. One _Severus _needed. Giant squid slime, the smell of boiled cabbage, naked Hagrid... better. Or, if not better, more appropriate.

"Come on," he said to his friend, nudging him a little. "I can see your face. You know what you want to say; you just don't want to say it."

"I have thoughts," Severus said charily, "but everyone's going to hate them."

"Unless they involve abject surrender," Evan told him, "let's have them anyway. There was some nodding in approval of his caveat.

Spike fidgeted.

"Out with it," Evan said lightly, squeezing his fingers, "or I'll kiss you in public."

This had been a risk, considering the morning. It panned out, though, winning him both the slightly amused and deeply horrified look and the stifled snorts from the floor that he'd been angling for. "All right, all right," Severus said, batting at him with floppy annoyed hands. Utter coincidence they trailed all over his chest, obviously. "You don't have to get _heavy-handed_."

"Oh, I think we do, darling," Narcissa said, smiling. "Speak up, or _I'll_ kiss you in public."

Severus slid her a squinty _I will get you_ glower, then leaned over and kissed her cheek with vindictive gallantry. "Well," he said, leaning back, "as I see it, we have a tactical problem and a strategic problem. The obvious one, the tactical, is individual vulnerability. That's a common problem, but it shouldn't _be_ a problem: this is a _school._"

Just for a moment, his eyes found Slughorn in the back, and his face was cold and blank. Just for a moment.

Evan did not jump up and scream at them not to eat each other. He would have been proud of himself, but really, he was too jittery, because he knew what Spike's problem was, but not what Slughorn's teeny little walrus-moustache-quirking smile was about. And that was just all kinds of wrong and nervous-making. Sluggy wasn't _supposed_ to be unnerving or look at people like they were tasty prey, he was supposed to look at people like they were delightful or weren't worth more than basic kind politeness, and Spike judging him with all the chill of space was just making him smile more. This was over Evan's head, but he wouldn't be able to ask Mum for help dissecting it until she agreed that Severus Snape was a real wizard Ev might reasonably admit to knowing. Not a new problem, but it had just jumped up the priority list.

Spike was looking like a real wizard again, rather than a wizard-shaped glacier. "What _makes_ it a problem," he went on, frowning, "is that we've somehow developed a reputation that lets people in other houses think about us as less than human. Just snakes. Biting vermin."

"Who cares what mudbloods and Muggle-lovers think," asked Thor Rowle, with a disdainful sniff.

Next to Evan, Severus swayed a little, went stiff. Evan squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt. That felt like the start of a breakthrough and a meltdown to him, and he wanted to keep Severus here-and-now.

"Personally," put in Lockhart, who was if possible even more embarrassing now that his voice had broken and developed a certain chewy, chummy, caramel, come-hither tone (because _he knew it_), "I think we should all try to get along in the spirit of—"

"Winning," Severus interrupted him flatly.

"We should try to get along in the spirit of winning?" Bast Lestrange repeated skeptically.

"Oh, yes," Spike said. The kids sitting nearest him inched back. When Evan turned, he saw that the cobra was smiling like a shark that smelled blood and was in no hurry at all. "They think us vulnerable? Then we become impregnable. They think us lesser? We become," he snarled, still smiling (or at least baring his canines), "_exemplary. _We beat them into the ground on pure points, nice and clean. You're all of good families, _you show them what that means_. Shouldn't they," he asked, nodding at Rowle as if this was in any way what Rowle had meant (_nicely _done, _why_ did they have to be in public), "be looking up to us? We remind them why. We show our quality."

"Beating them into the ground on pure beating them into the ground would be a lot more satisfying," Selwyn opined.

"Hear, hear," said Avery, and there were some echoes from the middle forms.

"No," Severus said. "More fun, yes. Absolutely, but…" he sighed with regret, then looked at them seriously. "This was a problem at Hogwarts before any of us got here. My first time on the train, people were saying they'd leave if they sorted Slytherin. Aren't we the home of ambition? Ambition doesn't start when you graduate. I say our goal, starting now, is that anyone who sneers about us gets asked," he took on a tone of speaking gently to a Thickey ward patient, "Er… why?"

"Quite right, Severus," said Narcissa approvingly. "When they're the ones who are beneath contempt, why do they get all the admiration? Because they're noisy and bright? Too vexing, darlings," she told the House with an aggrieved sigh, fanning herself with what had been an Exploding Snap card a moment ago, wafting a delicate scent of sandalwood over the room. "Not my colors."

"So that's the long-term strategy," Evan said, pulling the room's focus tight. "First step: we win both Cups next year. We win them _beautifully,_ so no one can say they won't be deserved. Everyone, get ready over the summer to make that happen. We certainly will." Narcissa and the sixth-year prefects all nodded. Severus, having no actual authority, just glinted with promising malevolence. "Train hard, don't skimp on your revising, and think about what else might help. We get into the habit of thinking that outside-the-box means cheating, but that's lazy."

"Rosier's going to talk about lazy?" Carrow (the witch twin) asked snidely.

Almost before she'd finished, Spike had shot forward in his seat to purr, "Do you know the difference between _shiftless_ and _shortcutting,_ Carrow? No? Best work it out before you find yourself lost, amputated, _and_ unaccountably... chilly..." He trailed off, frowning uneasily.

"I am indeed," Evan slid in agreeably, without any evidence of haste, "in favor of creative resource conservation. And goodwill is a resource we seem to be short on. So, as I was saying: we win, and win beautifully. If we don't quite manage that—which is not the plan, _the plan is to win,_ but always have a plan B—then we are _graceful_ in public, as serpents are graceful, and improve, as we're flexible, growing better skins all the time."

"Not just bitey," Severus mourned, speaking for the troublemakers as though this wasn't his idea in the first place, the (trying-to-be) sly thing.

Therefore, "_Not_ just bitey, Blunt Force Trauma," Evan agreed with a note of mild exasperation, and bopped him lightly over the head with Narcissa's transfigured fan.

"Ow," he lied, lied, lied, aggrieved.

Evan ignored him magnificently, as he was clearly meant to, and addressed the floor again. "Forget cheating: buckle down this summer, brainstorm around. Talk to the relatives and portraits, find out what tickles your family friends from other Houses, hit your family libraries, get creative. Charming and/or sincere, my lovelies, and Black and I _will_ hit you over the head with the cobra if it goes smarmy."

He thought about adding _No one likes smarmy_ _but Black,_ but he didn't think she was ready to be teased about Malfoy in public yet, even if she was done blushing.

Said cobra stuck out his tongue, not like a snake. Evan grinned at him over the ripple of amusement from the floor, squeezing his hand. "Objection noted and overruled, Naj. Give us the short-term."

"No one goes anywhere alone," Severus said promptly, by now well and truly distracted from whatever Rowle had said to jar him. "For the rest of the year, and at _least_ next term, we're in threes at the least outside the dungeons, all the time. _All_ the time. Yes, I know," he said, raising a hand at the collective protest that boiled down to _inconvenient!_ "But if anyone's attacked, three-or-more means at least one to go for help, and at least two to cover their retreat and defend each other. And if we do band together, that in itself should discourage most idle attacks. As long as we're not belligerent, and present as groups, not gangs. Anyone they think is looking for trouble will find it, believe me."

"You too, Snape," Fenshaw, one of the sixth-year prefects, told him firmly. "No private feuds. They're a hole in our defenses. If we're forming a united front, no one gets to duck out on protecting everyone else—_anyone_ else. And no one," he sent a threatening look around the room, "gets to be Lola Lionheart—"

"Ellie," Severus muttered, probably not even on purpose. Fenshaw turned ominously to him. Flushing, he explained, "Eleonor of Aquitaine was the Lionheart's mother," in a very small voice, and tried to hide behind Narcissa.

"That's the queen who took her ladies on Crusade topless, wasn't it?" Narcissa inquired, disapprovingly unruffled. The interested murmurs from both the witch-power and exceptionally-hormonal parts of the House happened like she'd actually waved her wand for them. Evan managed not to join in only because Spike looked like he was considering the virtues of various suicide methods and it was adorable. Besides, sunburn peeled disgustingly and it probably wasn't true anyway.

Oh, and Ev was in co-charge tonight. Right. That too.

"No one gets to be Lola OR Leona Lionheart," Fenshaw repeated, dividing his dirty-ice look between Spike and Narcissa before returning his attention to the room at large, "and say _Oh, I can take care of myself, I don't need protection_. I don't care if you need it. _We _need everyone to pitch in, and accept the benefits as your due as a Slytherin. Mandatory. I don't care if it's embarrassing at first, you'll get used to it."

He leaned forward and took Severus's eyes again. "Do you hear what I'm saying, Snape? This—means—you. Everybody's seen you keeping the other Houses from knowing who'd have your back if you'd let them. You want your friends who don't like fighting out of cursing range, perfectly understandable. I wouldn't want to rack up favors in your place either."

Severus glared at him. Evan was tempted himself, though expressing his feelings wasn't worth what it would sacrifice.

He didn't care about Fenshaw's coup. That was more than fine: it took the blame for the inconvenience off Spike and the responsibility off Evan. If Fenshaw was crazy enough to want the responsibility for getting a Housewide project off the ground and keeping it going in his NEWT year, especially one as tedious as this one was likely to be, he could have it. Everybody really knew what was what anyway, and it would be Noticed that Evan and Narcissa were gracefully going along with his power-grab, declining to squabble over credit. But that last jab...

Everyone with tact had mostly stopped trying to do nice things for Spike without haggling by now, except at gift-giving times when the reciprocity was left to his discretion. He had no family to discreetly even up the scales behind the scenes, after all, no comfortable assurance that it would all eventually come out in the wash. And that really was probably an enormous chunk of why he'd never let anyone help him. He might let Mulciber and Avery join or even take over a fight, once they'd also turned it political, but he never let anyone fight _for him_. Narcissa and Evan could talk delicately to Malfoy about touchiness and pride, but that was smoke.

Malfoy had no business knowing that Severus already knew what it was to be held paralyzed. Whether his mother was really somehow his father's hostage or not, he felt she was, and felt trapped. He'd never said so, but he didn't have to. This was Slytherin: people had eyes.

For most Slytherins, debt at school was just play (unless they failed epically), but it was well above his means, and he was more than bright enough to know it. For him the game of favors was a trap that might end up in inextricable servitude. He was terrified enough of it to risk stomping with quite heavy boots on quite fragile egos in quite powerful families when anyone tried to pull him in, so that no one should be in any doubt he was _not playing, thank you. _

Laying that bare for everyone had been... really not kind at all. Oh, those who didn't know and had a brain could guess, but these were the things one didn't speak of. Who had to?

Maybe Fenshaw had thought he did have to. For the slower kids who thought Spike was too dumb or unpopular to find allies, or going it alone out of Gryffishness. Or as a dig at him to cater to the snobbiest factions, make them smirk and feel Fenshaw felt and thought like them really, could be trusted, was a leader going where they wanted to go.

Maybe it _had_ been needed. Ev couldn't have done it. It had been cruel, stripping Severus even for a moment of all his skill and brilliance and barbs. Just for a second, even Evan had looked at him and remembered his father's blood, seen the dreadful state of the much-altered, often-mended shirt and trousers that had probably been secondhand to begin with. Evan's stomach had clenched, not knowing how many people in that room had seen how old his friend's pants were for themselves, or how many had heard secondhand, who seen him changed and bare. It had been _cruel._

Fenshaw looked back at Severus, not exactly coolly, not exactly unimpressed. With understanding even, but unmoved. "Sure," he acknowledged the fume. "But it's over, it's done. This isn't debt or favor: I swear to Salazar we will take bloody _points_."

Severus stared at him, obviously caught between a rising tide of cold Leona Lionheart fury and the suspicion that he was thoroughly confused. A dark eyebrow slid up, telling Fenshaw he was only getting the benefit of the doubt because of reasons—unnamed ones he wasn't going to get to know, and only by the skin of his teeth. Evan was a bit lost himself, and he thought maybe they weren't alone, but Reggie was hiding a smile. That was interesting... and promising, actually. All right, wait and see.

"You heard me," Fenshaw said coolly, and turned to everyone. "Someone attacks you, don't think _you_ were attacked: _a Slytherin_ was attacked. You join everyone else in defending that Slytherin. You're not defending yourself or accepting help for yourself, and they're not defending you. Just Slytherin. Slytherin is Slytherin, no exceptions, or none of this will work or mean anything to anyone."

Oh. Well, then.

"Fenshaw?"

"Rosier?"

"Marry me."

"No, thanks," Fenshaw said lightly, eyes amused on... oh. Evan's knuckles were rather white. He loosened his grip; Spike was right-handed, but not exclusively, and he didn't need either hand bruised. "Snog you if you like," he added brightly. "Together's okay if Snape ties his hair back."

Yes, Evan had definitely left his subtle up the Astronomy tower. Oh, well.

"Ooh, ooh, me too!" Wilkes squealed, bouncing up and down with her hand thrust up.

"Not till I get my camera!" Mulciber said hastily, alarmed, as though he _actually thought any of this was going to happen and Slughorn wasn't in the back of the room with his eyebrows up._

"I hate you all," Severus mentioned in a weather-reporting voice, before Evan could pick his jaw up off the floor. Blakeney hugged Spike's shin (probably taking her new name too seriously. At least with her it was cute; Lestrange had stabbed his mother's leg with her own shoe), and he sighed. "One more thing." He looked at Fenshaw, giving the necessary lip-service to authority. "Nobody leaves this room tonight without being able to do a protego, an expelliarmus, and a finite, right? Preferably nonverbally."

"And a coloring charm," agreed the senior prefect. "Open season, with _only_ a coloring charm, _only _in the common room and dungeon corridors. Don't get creative," he warned. "This is just reflex training; we don't need any stupid intra-House splintering over it. Professor Slughorn will help us set up an automatic point-recording system for tagging someone, being tagged, and being seen in funny colors, won't you, sir?"

Much of the room had collectively started and turned to crane, having forgotten that their Head of House was there. Sad, really. They ought to lose points for carelessness, but there were so many of them.

"Certainly, certainly," Slughorn said, smiling at them all in what looked like real pleasure. He seemed more like himself, but Evan wasn't reassured. "An excellent idea, m'boy. I'll speak to Professor Flitwick about it in the morning. And we'll have a little something for the winner in each year on the last day of term." He took over, arranging them all into practicing-pairs, but told Severus to go to bed. "Or Madam Pomfrey will have my ears," he added, wagging a finger.

"It was only a boggart," Severus muttered. This displayed a disturbed sense of chronology, but it was worse than that. There was something about his tone that said he didn't quite believe himself. Evan was afraid that whatever Rowle had said to disturb him had knocked something loose. His own unfortunate nudity pun hadn't helped—

—but the way he'd just leaped down Carrow's throat, barely any excuse at all, like he'd been coiled for the chance to strike for Evan all his life, hadn't that been something.

"I'll just see he doesn't spend all night studying," Evan said, tugging with gentle but inexorable force at a Spike now more mulish than combative.

"Do that," Narcissa agreed, and kicked Severus in the ankle. He jumped up and glared at her, and she gave him a little fingers-only wave. "Goodnight, darlings. Runes tomorrow, don't forget! You won't be able to see them properly if there are horrible bags under your eyes."

Severus muttered mutinously, but allowed Evan to propel him up the stairs to their room.

"I thought," Evan mused, closing the door, "that you were supposed to be a cobra. I knew I could depend on you for the safety tactics, but that strategy's unusually sneaky for you."

"Yes, well," Spike shrugged, "I realize that cobras are traditionally painfully obvious with excellent hair—"

"Oh, Merlin," Evan had to interrupt, "remember Scrimgeour? Bella's co-prefect?"

Severus rolled his eyes expressively: he clearly did. "But I hope I'm not completely stupid," he finished. "Escalating just goes on and on until—"

"You're brilliant," Evan cut him off, and moved on him, as if for the kill but really for the buttons. "You are," he went on, nuzzling down Spike's chest, mmm, all muscle again, "_reliably_ brilliant."

"Not today," he felt more than heard Spike say, sickly quiet.

"Every day," he contradicted him, coming back up for his throat, then pulling away to make Spike look at him. "You've got no scales left, that's all. Maybe no skin. Be a miracle if you did. Of course you get flustered, everything coming at you at once." He pressed their foreheads together. "You'll get better at that. We'll all be practicing with you, now."

"I don't like this," Spike said, moving back fitfully.

"What's 'this'?" He held still, remembering the Pomfrey's warning about touch.

"This, this. All of this." Severus started to pace. "I didn't want it to get big, I didn't want to get everyone involved… I haven't felt right all day, even after Marchbanks put me back in order. Even with the potion I can feel it itching at the back of my mind, under my skin…" His hands chafed restlessly up and down his arms, twice, and then he shoved them into his pockets. He kept prowling around the room, though, shoulders high.

"You've been driving everyone mad," Evan told him, sitting down on their bed. "I'm not going to try and tell you everyone likes you—"

"So I should hope. Obvious lies don't build credibility."

"—But letting the school see us all stand back and do nothing when one of us is regularly picked on hasn't been good for us. Those of us with brains know it. Think of the next scapegoat, Spike. The way things have been is not a precedent that will be good for them."

"I know," Spike said fretfully, pacing faster. "That's what I was saying."

"I was hoping it would sound more convincing if you heard it from someone else," Evan admitted, "because you're frankly not very good at being one of the crowd, and I don't think you quite realized it has to mean you, too."

Severus stopped at the window. He let out a long breath, too explosive to be called a sigh, and watched the fish swim past.

"And part of that itchy feeling," Evan said, putting a note of innocence in his voice to make Spike suspicious, "is probably that you haven't gotten settled in your body again yet. Being the generous person that I am," he added modestly, leaning back on his elbows, "I think I could manage to make the very great sacrifice of helping you out with that."

Spike turned around with a very dry eyebrow. "Oh, could you?"

"It's just possible."

"You can go snog Fenshaw if you like," Severus said, deflating a little as his eyes slid away, shoving a lock of hair behind his ear as though it had personally offended him. Evan thought _that_ jab had been a friendly one, or trying to be, but it had evidently hit a raw spot. "I'm not going to be very good company."

"Yes, I know I can," Evan agreed. "But I have, actually, no interest in it. May I decide what I think is good company for myself, please?"

Severus sighed, and sort of drooped his way back to the bed instead of apologizing out loud. He curled up with his face squashed into Evan's hip. Neither of these things was particularly squishy, but he found a corner to tuck his nose into all right. "I'm not, though."

"Nobody's a good judge of that, Spike," Evan said lightly, combing through his soft, limp hair, warmed to the core by his breath, by being what he curled up around to sigh dispiritedly into. Not good company, good grief. "Take Lockhart."

"No thanks."

"Mm, yes, I see your point," he agreed gravely.

"_Lockhart_ thinks he's an amazing Seeker who hasn't been asked to join the main team only because Gamp thinks it would be a crime to see his delicate porcelain skin bruised."

"You do know he's only even still on the Reserve team because Gamp _likes_ to see his delicate porcelain skin bruised," Evan hoped.

Severus shuddered, which felt lovely. "I'm just going to cling to the idea that it's because Reg would rather Chase than stand in line waiting for you to realize you're getting a bit big for it."

"...Should I cry 'oi'?"

"No," Severus said in his prosaic-and-indifferent voice, and the hand he lifted to run down Ev's shoulder was slow and warm. He could have done that in public, so Evan felt a little unbalanced by the tidal effect it had on him, the way it made him feel stroked and aching for more absolutely everywhere.

But this was _Spike,_ who would gripe about a blue sky hurting his eyes so no one would expect him to be outside on the next nice day. That caress had meant exactly what it felt like, and not what it would have looked like from the outside at all. Their balance was perfect, and even on a day like today there was no leaden silence; Severus was talking to him. It was unbearable, the happy, solemn weight of it, the longing pooling low. Evan caught his hand, slid a kiss into his palm, and then just stayed there in the warm.

Severus smiled a little against his leg, a wan twitch of a smile. "It occurs to me to ask whether you've ever snogged him," he said reflectively, "Lockhart, I mean. But I've already lost one meal today."

"Credit me with some taste, will you?" Evan asked, rather miffed. It had really been too much to hope that Spike hadn't noticed him amusing himself over what Gildylocks was probably making of the meeting in his funhouse mirror of a brain. On a different day, he might have expected needling.

"Well, he is almost as good-looking as he thinks he is."

Needling would have been so much better. There was something just awful about Spike's wry wistfulness. It spoke to Evan of giving up before beginning, which was just anathema to Slytherin. He could poke and hug and tug and smile Spike out of it, he knew he could, if he just knew what it was _about_.

"I've been tagging along after my dad my whole life," Ev mused, letting his hand go in favor of petting him slowly, "watching him make up beauty out of a bunch of rocks and oils and things, tell really gorgeous people yes, they do have to take thoroughly unattractive poses, or they won't be able to move right on the canvas. You know what Lockhart reminds me of?"

"A golden retriever with a superhero cape?"

Evan laughed, and bent down to land a kiss where he could. "An old lady who wants her three chins and warts taken off and is pretending not to see Dad's wedding ring."

"Your da's clients hit on him?" Severus asked, turning to look up at him in disbelief.

"Heady stuff, being painted, for some people," he nodded. "It's more attention than some of them have had in years. Very focused."

"I don't see the attraction," he muttered, turning his face back into Evan's leg.

"Of course you don't." Evan bent to kiss him again, then thought better of it and rubbed his back instead. For which hideously frustrating restraint he deserved a medal. "That's not you."

"Do you look like your father?"

"More or less." Reggie looked like his and Siri's father, and more like Evan's mum than Evan did. Sirius took after their mum, although he didn't seem to be letting himself realize it, and in more ways than one.

"Ah."

"All is explained?" Evan asked, adding, "I'm striking a Gildylocks pose here."

"And I'm seeing the lady with the hairy warts doing it."

"…Thanks for that; so am I, now."

Spike flopped over onto his back and grinned a little. It was a Spike grin, small and ironic, easily mistakable for a smirk if that was what you expected to see. It faded quickly. "Maybe you're right," he said, quiet, "maybe it would help, but I…"

"What would be good?"

Severus hesitated too long, met Evan's eyes and flicked away. "Could you, maybe… hands off?"

Evan frowned, not especially because not getting to touch wouldn't be his first (or fifth) choice. That had been Severus's asking-for-what-he-thought-he-could-get expression. "I could, maybe, if you didn't have your Throwing Ambition Under the Knight Bus face on. Come on, Spike, tell me."

Severus didn't say anything, looked studiously at the blanket.

He hesitated, weighed the risks, and decided here and alone was probably the safest place for the explosion to happen if there was going to be one. Careful not to sound careful, he asked, "Do you want me not to look at you?"

Severus went rigid on him and Ev thought, _here it comes_. After a moment, though, he let out a long breath and asked, a little unsteadily, "How did you know?"

"Mostly," Evan didn't exactly lie, "I was watching your eyes."

Almost no one had been so rough with him before, and Mulciber's brand of rough was very different. It didn't start out with long, timeless minutes of slow, drugging kisses, for one thing, face, throat, hands, so lulling and tender that the hardest bites weren't good because they were sharp, or surprising or edgy—they were just _good,_ just _enough _to spark him through the sweet, aching comfort. He didn't recall being made to keen like a lost child before, either, or digging in so hard his toes felt strained and his heels bruised. There was blood under his nails. He hadn't meant to do that, but the shocked, thrilled reverence in that last _Oh, _**_Ev,_** moaned so quietly into his mouth, the jerk and flutter of long fingers against his skin, his lips, in his hair, those final shuddering, fervent, bruising thrusts... not all accidents were mistakes.

Afterwards, Severus barely finished cleaning them up before doing an excellent impression of a snuffed candle. He'd had quite a day, after all.

Evan lay there with his eyes open against his green and silver necktie, in a sort of a tingling daze. _Evander,_ he told himself firmly, although it felt like some distant echo, _he has had a long nightmare of a day, and tomorrow _is_ Runes, which means you will be sitting on a hard chair with no cushioning charms allowed all morning. There might be some of the purple goo left, though..._ Regardless._ You are not going to wake him up and demand another go, you selfish_ git.

He sighed, and curled in to go to sleep with the tie still bound around his forehead. Seeing it might give Spike a nice thought to wake up to, something he could take around with him as a talisman, an omen for the day. Maybe something to take out when he got frustrated with Evan and Narcissa not letting him out of their sight.

And on the subject of 'out of sight,' the thought that he might never know what Severus's face had looked like for all that... intolerable, unbearable, impossible. Thank Merlin Mum and Dad liked to wait till he was home to do celebrations instead of owling him presents at school: he could ask for a pensieve for his birthday. It would be wonderful for examining perfectly innocent scenes from multiple angles, too, so it wouldn't be hard to explain. But he _had _to see, he had to know, he had to kiss that knife of a cheekbone, the lump he'd missed so much in that long, pale throat, had to feel that sleep-slowed, steady-and-strong-again pulse under his lips, had to close his eyes...

* * *

**Chapter art **(links in profile):

_...And went back to his book  
A sort of tingling daze_

* * *

**Slughorn's age: **Rosier Sr. was one of Riddle's gang, so Slughorn was teaching in the '50s. I'm assuming he wasn't hired as young as Severus, for a few reasons. First, Dippet seems to have been a more older-feeling, worn, cautious and conservative fella than Dumbledore and I consider him unlikely to have hired an inexperienced young man for a class with so much explosive potential, especially one who just doesn't move as quickly as Severus. Secondly, it's really very _weird_ to hire as young a guy as that for the Premier Magic School In The Empire. Factors explaining Severus's hire might include Tom and Albus playing footsie with each other, him being a real standout in the field that had to be snapped up even with his lack of experience, a stark lack of other candidates, and his predecessor having something to say about it. We have no information about Horace's hiring except that he's more likely to have been Dumbledore's friend than Dippet's and potions is his profession, not his vocation (networking). So while he _could_ have been a young hire, that story would need more explaining than that he wasn't. Of course, there really should be more Slughorn stories!

**Strategery: **What banged out here probably didn't consistently work well right away. James's and Lily's joint Head Boy and Girl status suggests that the 1996-7 year might have been a good one for Gryffindor (although, as we'll see in chapter 11, it also might suggest other things), and certainly there are a lot of Junior Death Eaters waiting to graduate while Slughorn is still teaching. They may not have been cooperative. Once Severus took over, though (and there are three ways to interpret the answers he and Sibyll gave Umbridge about how long they'd been teaching), it doesn't seem to have taken him very long to have gotten his House in order.

Remember, if Harry & co hadn't killed Quirrelmort etc, the 1991-2 year would have been Slytherin's seventh House Cup win _in a row_. That's either faculty favoritism or solid discipline. And it _could_ be favoritism, but, as Duj has reminded me, we only ever see a few Slytherins being badly-behaved off the Quidditch pitch: Draco's hangers-on. And even they are careful to do it when even Snape isn't looking. So my vote's for discipline.

Too, Draco was allowed by his parents to feel happy and comfortable bragging to random kids he met in shops that he'd get into Slytherin. This despite the well-known Slytherin-Death Eater association, made worse in his case by his own father's _definitely_ having been associated with the Death Eaters. Oh, cleared, yes, forced, yes, but if Slytherin was still, in 1991, tarred with Riddle's brush in more than Gryffindor/Order eyes, being seen to want it would have been a really _dumb_ move. The Malfoys want to be more prudent than that, even if they can't carry it off; they want to be seen to embrace the winning side. If Slytherin was still widely seen as tainted, Draco should have been under parental orders to at least pretend he wanted to go anywhere else.

**Incidentally,** I also think Severus does bed checks pretty much every night and there is not a _chance_ of any of his kids getting away with what the '70s Slytherins do, _especially_ joined beds. This is not hypocrisy (in his opinion): he got away with it, they'd get away with it if they could, too, and where he was lucky in his roommate, they're instead lucky in having a Head who isn't completely bloody irresponsible and doesn't allow them to be at the mercy of fortune.


	9. June 10: Midnight

_In the middle of the night. Miss Clavel turned on her light and said, "Something is not right!"  
—Madeline, _Ludwig Bemelmans_  
_

Lily has had it. Evan doesn't like her very much. Or Mrs. Norris. Or Severus's soap. But now he understands what Severus sees in all of them (except Mrs. Norris). He rather wishes he didn't.

* * *

**Warnings** for yes, Virginia, there is a Voldemort. And for Evan isn't terribly impressed with Evans. And an offscreen threesome (by which your narrator is unspeakably turned off). Characters' opinions and biases are their own, not mine. Evan is also not accustomed to strong feelings and is therefore bad at not being a little dramatic in his head. Or maybe that's called being sixteen...

Should I warn for bashing? Put it this way: There will be both negative (see above) and positive perspectives on Lily before the end of the chapter, neither of which are exactly mine. She could have had more of a voice if she'd wanted one, but she's had a really long, horrible day with a lot of crying and very hard choices and her friends not really understanding things and far too many BLOODY BOYS. She didn't want to explain her circumstances or life philosophy to snotty, drawling Slytherins she doesn't give a toss about, she just wanted to go back to bed. With unspiked cocoa, as she's just cut off her amaretto source.

_Yeah._ Who's groaning and headdesking right now? Who got it yonks ago? 'Fess up!  
**ETA **11/14**:** No one's confessed yet. Come on, guys, it's pretty darn lame, surely SOMEONE sees it...

My beta was confused four paragraphs in. I couldn't work a **clarify** into prose from Evan's point of view, so here it is in advance: he's far too well bred to call even a woman's portrait fat, even in his head. Besides, a woman who doesn't ask to be slimmed down in paint she'll be living in for all eternity has _character._ Respect.

**Chapter art**: (link in profile)  
_As a half-breed, I feel a bond._  
_It didn't do to start a cursing war with one's roommates (DAMMIT)._

* * *

Avery was snoring with his usual gusto when Evan woke up. Peering out from under the curtains, he found that he was alone in bed and it was still dark out. Severus wasn't in the bathroom. Or, when Evan had gotten his dressing gown on over some clothes, in the common room.

"Oh, no," he groaned, and summoned his prefect badge in case he ran into Filch. "_Point me Severus Snape,_" he cast, hoping his wand would take him to some nice quiet brooding spot by the lake, the Potions classroom, or the library, or…

It took him directly to Gryffindor Tower. Of course.

"Evans," he called sharply to the back of his fellow prefect's head as she started through the Pink Lady's passage (which did not sound well at all; he was going to have to try very hard to unthink it). Severus was just sort of standing there in a slump, staring after her, and he didn't blink much when Evan waved a discreet hand in front of his dull eyes.

She turned, and she had on the kind of expression Evan associated with a Narcissa who had just made Sirius prove what a barbarian he was enthusiastically turning into. "Oh, Rosier, good," she said curtly. "He said he was going to sleep here."

"I was," Severus said in a lost, hopeless voice. There was a lot more of his home accent showing than Evan was used to. He didn't even fall into it when he lost his head and screamed, these days. "I would have. I—"

"Save it, I said," she barked, turning her nose up with a nobility-under-assault look that made Evan itch to give her boils.

"He already is sleeping here," Evan said, struggling harder than he usually had to in order to keep his voice even, and did not add _you dim cow._

She frowned. "What?"

He rolled his eyes. "Never mind. I'll get him out of your hair if you'll answer a question for me." Of course he would anyway, and would probably not take all her hair with him (Spike might fuss about it later), but it was worth a try. He was a Slytherin; one had to keep up appearances.

"What question?" she asked. Warily, which showed at least the first glimmerings of sentience, if not actual intelligence.

"What did the Tartan do to your pals?"

Her expression reminded him of Narcissa again, this time a younger iteration who hadn't yet grown out of foot-stomping. "James Potter and his cronies are _not_ my 'pals.'"

Pleasantly (at least, he was trying for pleasantly), he replied, "You're the only one he even thinks about listening to and you don't stop him, so I don't care. What did McGonagall do to them?"

"Had them in her office and took points and shouted a lot," she said crossly. "They're in detention for the rest of the year. Saying he'll do what I want _if_ I go out with him isn't lis—"

"So, for a week, then," Evan drawled, smiling blandly with barely a twitch. He couldn't let her remind him of Spike, he'd scream her House down. What was _wrong_ with those two? Bending, compromise, trade, ego-stroking, these were not dirty words, they were how you got things _done._ And she was worse. Even Severus knew that pride was unaffordable sin, when its price was someone else's pain. Ev would have swallowed Potter's wand without hesitation if it would have done any good and wouldn't have hurt Severus worse than anything Potter could do, and she wouldn't go to Hogsmeade with him? So what if he was foul? Did she not know what the word 'friend' meant, or were Gryffindors just completely soulless?

...Then again, maybe 'if it wouldn't have hurt Spike worse' applied to her, too.

Ugh. It was too late at night to be fair.

Evidently too late in the term, too. He was going to have to get someone to scout the hourglasses in the Great Hall for him tomorrow, so he wouldn't find out that McGonagall hadn't docked her House nearly enough where people could see him. Because she couldn't possibly have, and was unlikely even to have tried.

"Oh, good. A week's detention. That will really get the message across. A message, anyway." He put his hand on Severus's arm. "Come on, Snape. Runes OWL tomorrow. You need some horizontal sleep."

"I have to go explain," Severus told the floor. There was an under-water air about him, something gently drifting, unmoored, lost and rippling, like loose seaweed. "She's forgotten all her elemental theory. We _talked_ about it. In Runes."

"…Yes," Evan said after a moment, his skin crawling. "You said." He turned to Evans. "I don't suppose you know what that means."

She tossed her head scornfully. "Oh, he had some notion back in third year about magic being all air and fire and wizards needing some earth and water to get them grounded. He was just making excuses for the language you lot use."*

"Excuse me," Evan said, his smile starting to ache at the corners, "but neither Slytherins nor purebloods are an homogenous lump. I can't imagine you've ever heard me, for example, or any of my cousins, ever use what you call 'language.'" Narcissa had been known to use slurs, but not in mixed company. Bellatrix used them regularly, loudly, and with enthusiasm, but Evans wouldn't know her.

...Come to think of it, Andi also used slurs, but they were different slurs. Evan still didn't know what she (and Sirius) meant by 'The Man.' Something deprecatory, clearly, but they'd never explained. The girls must have picked the terrible-language habit up from their father, because Ev _knew_ they hadn't learned it from his Aunt Dru. And of course, their father was Aunt Walburga's brother, so that probably did explain that. Evan was unendingly glad she was only his uncle's wife, not near-blood to him at all. Crawling terror about how much of her personality might be unavoidably hereditary probably explained everything about Sirius and Reggie that sheer having-to-live-with-her didn't.

"He uses it," Evans said coldly, looking at Severus with dislike. He wavered back a step.

"He uses it," Ev explained, keeping the words as small as he could manage, "to so that factions that mean it when they say it will see a fully human wizard when they look at him and, when he says,'she's mine, keep off,' keep off."

"I don't even know what you think that means, but—"

"Clearly." Although she was obviously in no mood for reason (if Evan had felt like being reasonable himself, he'd have allowed that not only was she in a nightdress under her dressing gown, but her bedhead was as bad as his. Maybe even that she might never, in Gryffindor, have been exposed to ideas like 'factions'), he gently tried, "But you know what _he_ means, what he's thinking when he says it."

"Oh, Rosier, grow up!" she snapped. He almost softened as he saw her eyes glimmering, heard her voice roughen. Almost. He'd been really considering it, and then Severus made a distressed noise, and moved towards her, and she clenched her fists and turned away sharply. And then there was another noise, choked. So, no. "I've made excuses for him for years, but if it's his life's ambition to go off and be a Death Eater, there's clearly nothing I can do about it. I'm not going to sit around watching him turn into a monster when he's not even fighting it."

Evan's heart gave one loud thump. That wasn't a name a person like her should know. Evan himself had heard it only occasionally, after he'd theoretically gone to bed, mixed in with grander names and the crystal chiming of brandy glasses. It was something, he knew, his father was intensely proud of, but kept closely secret. He was sure his mother knew, but not sure she'd been told. Dad had always given Evan the impression he was meant to feel curious and fascinated and wild not to be left out, so he'd dutifully snooped a little. It had all sounded boring and political, grown-up in a dull way, even or maybe especially once Bella started swanning around mysteriously dropping hints.

Maybe if he'd snooped more he'd know why Evans felt that what had always seemed to Ev like just one of a dozen very pointless blood-purity-obsession clubs was monstrous. It was natural for her, as a muggleborn, to be offended by societies like that, and he knew she had a melodramatic streak just as strong as Spike's and less well tamed. And Mum said most people didn't understand how silly men's clubs were, all brandy and cigars and Exploding Snap (not even in complex or divinatory variants, once there'd been enough brandy), all pomposity and posing and nepotism passing for serious politics.

Even considering that, though, surely this was a bit histrionic.

Well, it didn't matter what she'd _heard,_ just what she _believed._ Or could be made to believe.

"My cousin Sirius," he said slowly, "is always very definite about everything, but you know he makes up half the things he spouts out of whole cloth, yes? Nine-tenths, when it comes to Snape. Probably ten tenths. Possibly eleven."

She just scoffed at him. "Se—He doesn't deny it." So the rumor had come from Sirius, good. That left Evan with very plausible deniability.

"He probably doesn't know what you're talking about," Evan told her with an eyebrow up and a pitying lip, "because neither do I, because _Sirius probably made it up_. And spread it around, and forgot about it, and then when he heard it again it sounded oh-so believable and familiar. He does that."

That part, at least, was true. Sirius did that _all the time_. He'd invented and then given himself nightmares about the completely nonexistent Frumious Humdinger and Glumripping Squonk when they were seven. And, when they were nine, a disease that would turn wizards into house elves. And only two years ago he'd convinced Xeno Lovegood that some erumpent relation called a snorkack with a resurrecting horn was going to be on their Care of Magical Creatures OWL, and now they _both_ believed the thing existed. You could not talk either of them out of it. Ev had found this habit of Siri's hilarious, and used it to good effect often, before it had started exploding all over Spike.

"Snape," Evan went on with a long-suffering sigh, eying Evans with condescending patience and mentally crossing his fingers. Spike could take a cue under ordinary circumstances, but these were not they. Even on a normal day, he wasn't very good at straight-up lying. But Dad's friends were a fairly hardcore lot when it came blood purity, although they differed from the Blacks' circles in valuing secrecy even more highly. No matter how brilliant Severus was, or at what, would even the most clear-headed purity fanatic have tried to pull a half-blood in? The Princes were old blood, but a decidedly red and blue family: little recommendation in Dad's circles. If he'd just not-denied it (with Evans involved, let that read_ gaped like a swordfish_, or at best _stuttered incoherently_) instead of actually defending his position, the odds of his not knowing anything were on Ev's side. "What's a death eater?"

"…Takes poison?"

Phew. "Spot on, well done."

"Is that on the exam?"

"I sincerely doubt it."

"I have to go apologize," Severus said vaguely. "She's doesn't understand about code, she's forgotten all her elemental—"

"—Theory," Evan finished for him, turning him away from the portrait hole, "but you don't want to forget yours tomorrow, do you? The exam's tomorrow. You need your sleep. So does she." Since, in his opinion, Evans and her huffy noise and her _damn right I do_ did not merit another second's thought, he didn't give her one, but just chivvied Severus gently back along the halls.

They (nearly literally) ran into Flitwick, doing his rounds, but Evan told him Severus was sleepwalking. Severus stared down, doing a good enough imitation of a glass-eyed owl that Flitwick just tutted sympathetically and asked if Evan needed help getting him back to the dungeons.

"Ev?" Severus said, when Flitwick was far behind them.

"Mm?"

"I'm not asleep."

"Well done keeping quiet, then."

Severus sounded more present now, but Evan wasn't in the least convinced he'd been all there until Flitwick had cleared his throat and tapped him on the knee. The lack of jittery-Severan jump-and-yelp was most likely what had convinced Flitwick he really wasn't awake, but the surprise of it could have been what had pulled Spike out of whatever half-drowned mind-cushioning state he'd been slogging along in.

"And I know the Death Eaters aren't suicides. Some kind of secret political party, I heard."

"From Mulciber?" Mulciber's mothers were often guests when the glasses clinked, as was Avery's father. But Avery's father had a keen grasp on what his son could be counted on for, and keeping secrets from a school full of gossips was not in that category. Evan suspected he himself would be told more when he came of age, and Dad would probably be disappointed he hadn't found out everything on his own. For Avery, it almost certainly wouldn't be until graduation.

"Not exactly... bits here and there, from listening. Reggie, when I asked him. He was complai—er, he says your oldest cousin's very keen. Well, no," Severus backtracked, retracting his retraction with a scowl, because Reggie was at least as much his kitten as anyone else's. "He was complaining. And I don't see why he should have to get mixed up in politics just because he hasn't figured out what he wants to do yet, either."

"He doesn't have to," Evan said with a sigh. "He just won't be able to avoid it unless he learns how to tell her no. As it's rather too late to avoid being her pet. And if he learns how to tell her no, he needs to bottle that and share with the world."

"Always right?"

"It's more she's either borderline obsessive or it doesn't exist."

Severus nodded, not really interested in Bella. "How can you have a secret political party?"

Evan shrugged. "By doing your campaigning one-on-one behind closed doors, I suppose. Influencing people to do things without advertising who'll benefit. If you want to know about politics, you should ask Narcissa or Slughorn, Spike. Or Malfoy. I paint."

"She never gave me that letter from Malfoy."

"We'll remind her in the morning."

They walked further, then, "Ev?"

"Mm?"

"I made a complete fool of myself this evening. In front of Slughorn and Reggie and everyone. Those bastards are a lightning strike, but this one was all me."

Evan turned to look at him. He'd sounded perfectly steady, but his eyes were spilling over. "Oh, no," someone said in a wrenched sort of voice. "Sweetheart, Severus, no." It was the second time today he hadn't noticed himself moving, but suddenly everything that mattered was wrapped up in his arms.

Funny how these things could happen while your brain was snagged on some pointless detail, like the way torchlight edged black eyes and wetness in flickering gold.

"_Whatever this was happened in public,_" Severus mocked himself savagely, his fingers clawlike in Evan's dressing gown. "_It was just a boggart_."

Evan tightened his grip until he heard something creak. "Pomfrey said you might not remember at first. So that's normal. Insofar as anything about this is normal. I told them that before I fetched you."

"So everyone knows."

"'Fraid so, Spike. I gather there were Hufflepuffs there."

A little snort of teary laughter.

He said, "Rumors fly around, but they get confused. Before the end of the week everyone will be saying it was some really young girl, or that they fed you to the Squid. You'll see."

"Tomorrow's Friday."

"By Monday, then. You just keep your head up and stick to us and get more Os than all of Ravenclaw put together. And don't kill Potter; it'll tell him he got to you."

"I think he knows, Ev."

"He is _wrong,_" Evan told him, his voice too hard in his own ears. He softened it, tightened his arms again. "If you think he's right, he broke you, you're wrong, too. You got thrown. Not a problem. Serpents do fine on the ground, Naj. You've been brilliant, all day, completely yourself, just a little fuzzy. Don't waste your flattery on someone that pointless."

"Killing him is flattery?" There was bemused whimsy in the question, which proved Evan was right. A Severus who could pause for you're-being-ridiculous would be _fine._

"Yes, because he's not worth a thought, Spike. You got caught off guard and you were too strung out to pull yourself together in time. That's because you go insane in exam weeks, nothing to do with him. What are you giving him credit for?"

"We neither show any signs of anger," Severus murmured, "nor are we offended—although we bloody well are—yet we are on our guard against him. We quietly get out of his way."

"Yes."

They just breathed for a minute, while Evan didn't lick, or suck, or beg Spike to keep crooning thoughtfully into his throat, or slide to his knees. Spike's head wasn't with him in that right now, of course it wasn't. So they just breathed together until Severus said, dripping with irony, "Some lunatics in Ravenclaw take all twelve classes. Other than that, it should be cake."

"That's the spirit. But you know what the really hard part will be."

"Not ripping the bastard's lungs out with my teeth on sight."

"No, no, cake, we've covered that. No, the _hard_ part is," he pulled back enough to give Severus a tragic face, "if you don't win the color-zapping competition, the baby snakes will think they can swarm you and hug your ankles with impunity."

Severus didn't seem inclined to be let himself be amused. "Ev?" he asked again, leaden. "She's just never going to speak to me again, is she."

Evan paused, and considered, and then just said what he wanted to. "Probably not." It came out harder than he'd intended, and he couldn't regret it. "And I'm going to try hard to be sorry about it because I know you'll miss her, Merlin knows why. As far as I can tell she never had the first qualification to make any Slytherin a half-decent ally. She's a gullible, shallow, vainly self-righteous, pigheaded, black-and-white blinkered prig. Even reckoning without the trouble associating with her has made for you, you're well shot of Miss Priss."

"Don't," Severus said softly, turning his eyes back into Evan's shoulder. "Don't."

"I won't, then," Ev sighed, stroking his back, "but I don't know when I've meant anything more."

Without looking up, Severus noted, "Most of those things could be said about your public face, you know."

"Are you telling me a person like her keeps up a public face?"

"No." Severus moved as if he was going to detach himself, and then clung closer instead.

Evan had the thought that it didn't take very much to make him happy. Except that, from Spike, that wasn't a 'not very much' move at all. It was probably wrong to be as happy as this when one's friend was so unhappy. Except that Evan's happy was pierced and shredded by how much Severus was aching. It hurt. But it was a perfect and right hurt he wouldn't have changed if he could have, as sweet and close as it was sharp.

It was hard to sort out, really quite complicated, so he stopped trying. Who needed him to, anyway? Listening and petting were far more useful.

"But people are different in different company," Spike was saying wearily. "Especially people who don't wear masks on purpose. And nobody's delightful when they're frustrated. And I do think you may have been predisposed not to credit someone of no family with any virtues. In fact," now he did raise his head, enough to give Evan a sad and crooked little smile that would bring the world to its knees in cardiac distress if it wasn't kissed at once, "I know you weren't."

"It was more that you looked like you'd never stepped into a shower in your life."

"I hadn't. Our street just has outdoor pumps. You can use them like a shower in summer, if someone helps, but in winter you have to use buckets."

Ev had to pause, because that was a difficult idea to wrap his mind around. Flaunting one's money was gauche, but _no indoor plumbing? _For their eighteenth anniversary, the porcelain one, his parents had bought themselves a bigger-on-the-inside bathtub with nearly as many bells and whistles as the one in the Prefects' Bathroom.

Evan had been seven at the time. The idea of making an heir had only occurred to his parents when his Nanny Melania had lost her health, lost her patience, and told them _look, darlings, __here is an elf to be a nanny for the grandchildren you will cease to avoid giving me NOW._ He'd used the tub as a hot water swimming pool for years. Then he'd realized how much sex they were probably having in it, begged Severus to find him a potion to pour down his ear to bleach out his brain, and been soundly laughed at.

He shook his head a little, banishing the terrible images again. "Well. Predisposed, yes. But you like her, so. And I did try to like her myself this year, Spike, I really did, since we had to work together. But she doesn't do her job."

"Evan," Severus drew back, warm and eye-smiling with exasperation, "_you_ don't do your job. _I_ mostly do your job."

He tilted his head a little, warm, too. "No, Spike, you do a job we haven't seen anybody do before. Which does, I admit freely and with pleasure, make my job very easy."

Severus looked like he was going to argue, and then visibly remembered what the prefects of past years had actually been like. He made a face. "Well, I do what your job ought to be."

"Not so much, Mama Cluck," Evan said, and squeezed him. "We're just the junior prefects, Narcissa and I."

"I can't even look after—" His voice broke, and he tried to wrench away.

Ev pulled him in again, tight. "Nobody _can_ look after themselves, Spike. Naj, you've got to figure that out; you're Slytherin. Slytherin knows this. We make the world safe enough that people only have to handle the little things on their own, because no one can look after themselves. That's what a House is for, blood or school. You were there tonight, you saw how ready everyone was to pull together."

"Not everyone for the same reasons, though," he said darkly.

"Doesn't have to be. Use what you've got. Everything about family and blood, all right, it's got a snobby side and even a nasty side, but at the heart it's about looking after our own. And I _know _you know this, because you've been killing yourself doing it since that slime who was after Lockhart."

"That was just about you don't _do_ that."

"That was about we don't _let_ you do that — to our babies — because it's bad for them."

"Well, yes…" Severus agreed cautiously.

"Well, _yes,_" Evan said firmly. "And you know what, Spike? Gryffindor knows it, too. As far as they're concerned, defending yourself isn't even baseline for requirements. It may even be cowardly to some of them. What they respect is defending other people, too." He paused. "Of course, _they_ only respect it if you shout about it with your hair flowing in the wind and waggle a shiny sword."

Severus snorted a little, which under the circumstances was rather like catching the snitch right before the other team could make its fifteenth goal.

"So they don't see what you do," Ev said, going back to stroking his back. "They don't know how to look. We do. And yes, there is that predisposition, and some of them are never going to forget about it no matter how often Narcissa tells them who your grandparents are. But you're ours now, and I'm sorry, I know it's hard to swallow because you're _completely mental_, but we expect people to treat our things with the proper respect. It's an insult, and Slytherin does not take kindly to—"

"_Ah-ha!"_

They both jumped, and squinted against the lantern shining accusingly in their faces.

"Students out of bed!" Filch said gleefully, rubbing his hands together. "Thought you could sneak out to the Astronomy tower, did you? We're all wise to that, my lads, and…" he faltered.

Probably he'd seen the glint of Evan's badge, now that they'd parted and turned to him. "Just bringing a sleepwalker back to bed, Mr. Filch," he said pleasantly. "It's been a bit of a day. Nothing untoward, right, Snape?" He turned to Severus, who wasn't there.

That is, he was there, but you had to look down. Then you didn't, because he was standing up with Filch's sulfur-eyed demon kitten cradled in his arms. At least, she'd been a kitten at the beginning of the year, but she'd long since grown out of any trace of cuteness. Now she was purring ecstatically and trying to jam her nose into Severus everywhere. "I see she's gotten old enough for catmint," he said dryly, his accent suddenly back.

Evan hated that accent, which was flat and ugly and made Severus think about ugly things, but oh, clever, clever Spike. He hadn't known Severus was adjusting himself to private audiences. Filch needed to go away so Ev could bite the slipperier-than-he-acted little slyboots all over. Definitely especially his feet, scrape up and down that sensitive, elegant achilles' tendon, suck his arches and toes, tongue between them, make him squirm a _lot_.

"Oh, it's you," Filch said, lowering his lantern and scowling. "You didn't ought to be out and about at this hour, Snape."

"Didn't mean to be," Severus backed up Evan's story, his fingers busy behind the cat's ears. "Rosier couldn't even wake me up, it was Flitwick."

"Didn't look like sleep_walking_ to me, boy," Filch said suspiciously.

Severus looked down, his mouth so tight Evan was surprised he could talk. "It's been a really _interesting_ day," he said quietly. Judging it wise enough on balance, given how things seemed to be going, Evan put an arm around his back again.

"Back in old Dippet's day," Filch said, scowling more, "a gang of ne'er do wells like that would have been strung up by their thumbs before they'd been here a week. We didn't have none of this when you brats knew you'd be asking for a whipping if you stepped out of line."

"Sounds good to me," Severus said, and gave him his cat back.

"What do you want to walk around with catmint for, anyway?" Filch demanded, cuddling the demon protectively. Her pupils, in the light of his lantern, seemed to be different sizes. So did her fangs.

"It's part of a potion I put in my soap."

Evan blinked at him, but this did not seem to be a joke. "You can put potions in soap?"

"You have to make the soap from conkers, like the Vikings, no lye," Severus said judiciously. "That is, no L-I-E _or_ L-Y-E." Evan groaned dutifully, and was grandly ignored. "But yes. If they don't react to the chestnuts. This one doesn't, once it's done."

Filch stared at him, and asked Evan suspiciously, "Is he pulling my leg?"

"He's talking history," Evan said in a long-suffering voice, "so no. And he's talking potions, so really no. And he's _making horrible puns_, so he is being, in fact, painfully and scrupulously exact, so that if you tell him 'that wasn't funny' he can lie through his teeth and tell you," he dropped his voice an octave, straining his throat, "'It wasn't supposed to be funny; it was a fact; let me show you my color-coded cross-indexed references.' And then show you his color-coded cross-indexed references." Severus wrinkled his nose at Evan, who poked it, grinning. He turned back to Filch with a little shrug, only slightly sheepish. "I will get him back to bed now, Mr. Filch, sorry to trouble you. Good night."

When there was enough space between them, he said, "He likes you."

"He resents people less who clean up after themselves," Severus corrected. "Most of you lot are used to elves; you leave things about for them to tidy away without thinking about it. And I think he can tell my neighborhood would think he's got a posh job, which, again, is not common around here. Even in the other Houses."

"And you like his demon cat."

"I think she's part kneazle. As a halfbreed, I feel a bond."

"Sometimes even I'm not sure when you're joking," Evan eyed him.

Severus shrugged. "She's just a cat, Ev. You should have taken Creature Care with me."

"Spike, people lose limbs in that class."

"It was the professor, and it was just his…" He paused. "Actually, a thumb isn't 'just,' but Madam Pomfrey got it back on all right. It's breathtaking what she can fix, when you think about it, what magic can fix."

The unspoken words built between them, looming heavier until Evan sighed and gave them voice. You had to do that, sometimes, to stop something festering. "Not everything."

"No." His shoulders tightened convulsively.

That looked like a this-morning kind of upset, so Evan said, "Make me understand."

Severus swallowed, took a steadying breath. "Understand what?"

"About Evans. Tell me you haven't been mooning over her for years just because of the pretty."

"I haven't been mooning, we're—we've been friends," Severus said tiredly.

"And no one in the entire school can understand why," Evan told him. "Make me special, Spike." He didn't care two pins about Evans, but it would be useful to know what Severus thought he was losing. And it would get his mind off what had been done to him.

That got him a wan smile, although it didn't last. Severus was quiet until they got to the bare stones of their entryway, but it was a thinking quiet.

"Resistance is futile," Evan said, only mostly to the wall. Then they were inside. The common room was solemn at night, a threat aimed outwards but still a threat. A quick check by lumos showed that no one was lolling about snogging tonight, for once. The common room was painfully clean. This, on a Thursday, meant it had recently been such a complete disaster area that the elves had had a fit. Maybe everyone had tired themselves out turning each other funny colors.

Severus seated himself in front of the cold fireplace and gave it a poke with his wand. "I think if you cut her she'd bleed magic," he said to the flames.

Evan knew some people who would have liked to test the theory that she'd bleed mud (and was currently in sympathy with them), but he just sat down.

"When I was little," Severus went on, "I'd practice and practice and concentrate and screw up my will into a needle until I could take the heat out of a burn, hold a boiling kettle, have a leaf edged in ice and on fire in the middle, keep comfortable in any season, no matter what I was wearing. And then there was this ginger Scouse in a summer home in one of the nice areas—a _summer home,_ Ev, you've no idea, we keep up the mortgage, but even when Da can get work, my _god, _and it's the same for everyone. It's like... it's like you look at Malfoy, you know? What a _waste,_ what _for? _What do you want to come swanning around here for, no one's going to Oo-er won't you be the saving of us," he mocked, rolling his eyes. "And her sister was like that, right enough. But she just liked the forest, found something to like everywhere. First time I saw her, she was in the old playground, just spinning about in her white frock, making the dandelion fluff dance like it was nothing, like all the chains weren't rusted."

"Pretty," Evan commented, neutral. He could see it, the grass and the bright circle of the dress, the glint of her vivid hair, the soft, moving swirl. It would make a charming and beautiful painting, until he stabbed it repeatedly with the palette knife.

"Pure," corrected his friend. "Simple like sunlight, that makes a thousand complicated things grow. She was always like that. She'd have a whim that no one should be able to make happen without a wand, and it would just happen. Pretty-pretty, yes, but, Evan, if you saw my street. The grey, the… the dust, the way the river gets worse and worse, the brown and the smell, the washing lines, the women who look sixty when they're forty, the men turning into angry bears when the work went away. Lily was the only grace I'd ever seen that wasn't a real flower, and those go in the cauldron, or get hung up to dry. There were prettier girls about, but they didn't _live_ like she did. They were going to be their mams, live in the dust until it choked them to death, they didn't put out their hands to the sky. Not just no power: no _vision_.

"And she just… she just brought it with her, spread it about everywhere she went. Even me, she made me think I didn't have to try so hard, that I could just _breathe._ So I did. Because what you have to do is get your mind right. She showed me sod the ritual, don't try so hard, you know what it feels like to be there, just be there. I started to… to see there was room for grace, that what I had…"

He put his hands together and opened them, blew over his open palms. The firelight flickered as though in a strong wind, then brightened, turned to a dancing rainbow of glacier colors. It went very badly with the sober green couches and the formal chairs: turned the room colder, its shadows darker. But it was beautiful itself, if you didn't look away.

"I always thought there ought to be more than the filth and the endless scraping-by," he said quietly. "But even when I could get books, even with pictures, I never had a real idea what that would look like. And she just carried _more_ with her, she was generous with it, she was bright and quick and she wanted to learn. She wanted to know what I knew, join me in knowing, not beat me down for being a swot. That was… different. And that pigheadedness, that kept her herself even though," he gave one breath of a chuckle, "I'd really love to feed her sister to Narcissa. Petty's just always _shredding_ at Lils, jealous and sour and clutching at everything dull like nothing with wonder in it's worthwhile, or even all right. Very, very sour grapes. If there were a step past vinegar, that sour. And Lily just stayed herself, and we made the most incredible things together."

After a long moment, he added wryly, "Useless, of course, most of them, and we had to take them apart quickly to stay out of trouble when they weren't ephemeral by their nature. But they were better than anything I could have done by myself. Thought of by myself." He turned, gave Evan an unhappy smile and shrug. "I've just always liked the way she dreams."

His expression faltered, and he asked, "Evan?"

"Yes?" Evan asked. His voice sounded thick in his ears.

"You look… angry?"

What he was, he realized, was horrified. Or maybe appalled was the better word. But it had nothing to do with angry. "No," he said, reaching for Severus's hand, long-fingered and calloused, stained, unusually, only with ink. "No, I'm not angry. It's just…" he let out a breath, slid him a rueful smile. "I understand perfectly."

He hadn't wanted to, not to understand _this_. It was hard to know whether he wanted to send her flowers for taking the temptation of herself away from his friend or to curse her in some low-key but permanent way she'd never be able to forget for turning out her light on him. He understood now why Severus was punctured more than angry; he wouldn't be able to stand up after that kind of loss either.

But _he_ didn't have to try. And she was such a blind idiot he'd never have to. _Ha_. No, working with Evans again next year wouldn't be an issue. He could be completely professional, no problem, and she probably wouldn't even notice him gloating.

Spike frowned at him. "I don't think I do," he said carefully.

"That," Evan told him, standing up and stretching, "Is because you have all the ego of a diced flobberworm."

"Thank you very much," Spike said, dry. "That's a lovely image, a charming comparison. It really clears everything up for me, too. I feel quite illuminated."

"Yes, I thought you wouldn't," Evan said sympathetically, pulling him up. He could have told Severus about his boggart, but he didn't want to talk about it. It was too raw. Besides, Severus wouldn't understand. Diced flobberworms, really. He could say all that about Evans, but he'd never understand it could work the other way around. He'd convince himself it meant Evan needed him to _do_ something, and probably kill himself trying before Evan could work out what the mad alchemy lab he called a brain was churning out and talk him down. "Come on, Homer, it's gone midnight."

"…Why am I a blind poet?"

"For exactly the reason you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"You are maddening beyond the ken of man and no one would blame me if I strangled you," Spike informed him.

Evan flicked his wand at him, and a splodge of coppery, vaporous color zapped onto his face…

…and drifted off aimlessly, dissipating in the blueish light from the fireplace.

He stared at Severus, who looked like karma had just handed him the key to the Department of Mysteries' library and a whole storeroom full of fresh potions ingredients. "Soap?" Evan asked resignedly.

"Soap," Severus agreed, the embodiment of smug. "Proof against potion fumes, cauldron splash, and myriad minor hallway hexes. Worked out the recipe with Mam before I got here. I make the bastards _work_ for it."

A despairing smile pulled at Evan's mouth. He shook his head, and asked, "Why aren't you selling it so you can retire at thirty?"

"It's not dazzlingly special; most serious brewers have a formula like this," Severus told him. "I like ours because of the hex protection, and it's better than most against fumes, but even if people didn't like to customize their own, it's not what I'd call marketable."

"Uses something you have to get from Hagrid?" Evan asked wisely. He'd learned over the years that Hagrid was, to his friends, an invaluable source of things Severus was about a decade away from being able to afford on his own. Severus was a bit conflicted about this, as the man clearly had no idea, but as Hagrid seemed to be _happy_ with all the many gifts of mead and cider...

"No, nothing like that," Severus said with a shrug. "Just a side effect I don't think most people would put up with."

"Oh?"

Another shrug. "It turns me a bit yellow all over. Not enough to notice, really, but people seem to be awfully vain about that kind of thing, or maybe that's just Reggie and Lockhart… Ev?"

"Mm?"

"Why are you beating your head against the wall?"

"Oh, no reason. Yellow all over? Hair and teeth too? Eyes?"

"I don't want to get splashed with god-knows-what in any of those places, Evan, yes. It's an all-over protective field."

"But when you want to drink something...?"

"It's only for splashes and airborne particles; it doesn't hold out against a steady— are you going to stop that at some point, or has the wall been sentenced to slow execution?"

"You're using my soap from now on."

"…You have the strangest fantasies."

"And knowing you'd say something like that," Evan said, turning to glare at him, "you complete headcase, is why I'm beating my head against the wall."

"I'm a headcase?" Severus asked with a raised eyebrow, peeling him away from the wall, much against his will. "You're the one who wants to force his soap on pe—" He stopped abruptly, losing color, and scrubbed his hand against his mouth. "I'm going to brush my teeth," he clipped off, and took the stairs two at a time.

Nice wall. Cool wall. Solid wall. Evan allowed himself two or three more thumps, and then followed him up.

To make his day complete, Avery and Mulciber were awake again, their own beds pushed together and shagging someone. She sounded like Cattermole. Evan had no objection to that, per se. None of them had a test tomorrow. There was no reason they shouldn't stay up as late as they liked. They were having a good time in a free moment, relaxing at the end of a long week, fine. They were even, amazingly, having a good time without making enemies (unless Cattermole had some game on). Well done Avery and Mulciber! Er, and Cattermole. Evan was strongly pro-harmless-pleasure, on principle, and those two didn't manage it often. Really, there ought to be cake.

But Mulciber, damn him, had neglected to put either a noise-containing charm up or a gag on Avery. One could _hear the man drooling, ugh._ And the phlegmy snuffling! The hippopotamus grunting! And Cattermole (if it was her) was _shrill.  
_

(Also, definitely faking it. Definitely up to something. He didn't want to know.)

Evan cringed his way into bed with his hands over his ears, muttering imprecations and also Spike's muffling spell under his breath. One didn't start a cursing war with one's roommates, but he could dashed well set Wilkes on them, and Narcissa, too.

Three minutes later he forgave them. Utterly.

Severus came back to bed with a slightly bloody and extremely minty mouth, looking grim and upset and tired to death. But he took one look at Evan's face and not only kissed him all over it and cuddled him so closely Ev wouldn't have cared if he _could_ still have heard Avery, but completely failed at humming Evan soothingly to sleep. He'd tried very hard, bless him, and was still trying when Evan dropped off. Not even Spike's voice, though, was clever enough to hum and snicker uncontrollably at the same time.

Ev was sure his expression could not possibly have been that funny. His touch of miffed about that was barely a flyspeck against the sun of his gratitude for the unexpected utility of Spike's looking-after-people thing.

He still loosed the girls on them. If you didn't teach Mulciber, he wouldn't learn. SOME consideration for others is necessary in community life.

* * *

* More on Severus, Lily, elemental theory, and the term 'mudblood' in About the Swot.

* * *

**Notes**  
Yes, there are plenty of other explanations for Professor Snape's appearance, including 'some people just have oily hair' and 'wizard hair follows its own laws.' The latter may have been done first and/or best by Reera the Red in _The Wounded_. This explanation is my personal canon. It has (minus the chestnut soap; that's new research) lasted through six years and at least three iterations of people telling me their own personal-canon explanation is the right/likeliest/sexiest one. And in the 'verse they write, it is the right one! Beauty of fanfic. Anything the canon narrator didn't see for himself is fair game.

Which is the whole point of this series, really.

On the subject of potion-related hygiene, Severus's legs aren't white because he shaved because he was a girl, or they wouldn't have been both scrawny and white in canon. Hair traps both heat and particles, and Imma shut up on that subject before my muse throttles me. (g) I also figure that hair, unlike skin flakes, is too big to be kept out of the cauldron by something that guards against airborne particles, which is why he keeps it just long enough to be tied back. Thanks to the reviewer who asked the question that made me fully uncover that assumption! This is why being asking questions is cool: sometimes it clarifies things for an author.

Evan has very limited information about what the Knights of Walpurgis/Death Eaters are really like right now. So does Lily. Slytherin story, remember! Someone saying or even believing something doesn't make it a fact. In fic or life.

If you thought it was a tribute, you're probably right. And I congratulate you on your impeccable taste in mysteries. If you didn't notice, may I introduce you to Lord Peter Wimsey? Delightful chap, don't be fooled by the silly-ass manner, the man's Slytherclaw to the bone.


	10. June 11

Evan knows what he wants. So does Severus. Irresistible force, meet immoveable pessimism.

Unless Irresistible Force doesn't get a nap first. In which case it will mostly meet doorframes.

* * *

**Warnings** for more of Severus's graphic imagination. And Norse poetry. And discussions of '70s-era Muggle prejudices. And more Pratchett references. And Shakespeare that is (I cry you mercy, Google Translate!) Greek to me. And Slytherin-style soppiness. _In spades._

**Re the 'But how will Severus become so bitter?'**** question: **Am thrilled anyone's engaged with the story enough to want to know instead of just crying 'unrealistic!' and walking off, but it's like asking "Who killed Mr. Boddy?" when he's only just handed out the murder weapons. The Hogwarts part of this arc is purely prologue. It was _supposed _to be ten pages, tops, ahahahahaheaddesk. I just wanted to get into Evan's head a little, because he was being kinda 2D in the main piece and needed fleshing out. That was really all I meant to do here.

But I will tell you the butler didn't do it.

Unless 'it' is hiding the locket. In which case, yeah, Kreacher totally did that.

(anyone who didn't get that reference, GO WATCH CLUE RIGHT NOW. The fic will still be here when you get back.)  
(Is it called Cluedo in England? I know the game is. Although I don't know whether it homonyms with dew or dough.)

* * *

Even Severus's rather strange brain didn't seem to blame Evan for what Ev was mentally calling The Soap Debacle. He still had to be dissuaded from slinking to the end of the table as usual to read while he ate and threaten Lockhart with a fork if he reached for his wand.

"You've been sitting with us all week anyway, darling," Narcissa pointed out. "You don't want to be seen changing what you do just for them, do you?"

"No, but I think that either looking at them or having my back to them might not be the wisest thing to do while eating," Severus admitted. "You both always sit in the middle-front. Which I assume is to keep an eye on each other, but I prefer to opt out during meals."

"Salazar's sake," Mulciber grunted, annoyed, insofar as one could grunt so many sibilants. "Tim, sit across from Snape." Avery was almost half again Severus's size. Severus wouldn't see around him, and no one behind Avery would see through him. "I'm not standing around bloody _strategizing_ before breakfast."

"I don't want to be hexed from behind, either, when they try to get at him!" Avery protested.

"You won't be," Severus told him, a great deal more certain than when he'd been dragging his heels on his own behalf. Wilkes laughed at him, and he ignored her with dignity after only making a really quite amiable face. "Our side will be able to see them," he assured Avery, serious, "and we'll put up shields. Anyway, they'd have to be even madder than I think they are to try something in front of the faculty this soon after—after."

"But you—"

"I simply prefer," Severus told him with a grimace, "not to take my Runes theory test with a case of indigestion."

"You could just take something for it," Avery grumbled.

"That," Severus said with an inscrutable expression that meant he didn't want to look glum in front of the whole school, "might interact with the only minimally tested potion which is currently keeping me from flaying everyone's skins off and stuffing them in toasted strips through their toothless mouths and jelly-filled eye sockets."

"Severus," said Narcissa after a very long moment full of everybody looking at him. "You know, darling, we didn't want indigestion either."

"Sorry."

"So I'll just sit over here, then," Avery said, eying Severus. Evan couldn't quite tell whether his gaze was disturbed or admiring or both.

"Excellent plan," Severus said, all sprightliness. "Mulciber, stop taking notes on the venomous, hyperbolic, sleep-deprived cathersis, it disturbs everyone."

"Sure thing, Snape, just spell HYPOCRITE for me, will you?"

"Right you are, let's see, only guessing without a quill, but I _think_ it's spelled next time you forget the muffling charm when you ought not to, I won't stop Lance strangling you in your sleep..."

"No, darling," Narcissa said helpfully, stifling a smile while everyone pretended to avoid looking at Cattermole's red face, "there are only nine letters. You'd better have some tea."

"Tea," Evan echoed, blinking at the table heavily, longingly. He was going to have to navigate the process of sitting down in a chair before he could have any. On the plus side, he would at that point be sitting down.

The morning's owls contained a hurt or huffy note (hard to tell) for Severus from Malfoy. "'I didn't expect an immediate answer,'" he read out, looking puzzled, "'but at least tell me whether you're considering it.' What?"

"Oh, yes!" Narcissa exclaimed, pulling yesterday's scroll out of a pocket in her robes. "Here you are. Evan, darling, you've been awfully quiet. Aren't you going to eat anything?"

Evan blinked. Somehow that hadn't occurred to him. He reached for the toast, and decided chewing it would be too much effort, and reached for the muesli, and remembered that muesli was disgusting. And also needed chewing. He looked at the eggs. They looked disgusting, too, although the elves were quite good at eggs.

Severus looked up from the letter, and a minute later Evan had a cup of tea with nearly enough sugar (Spike never could quite bring himself to put in four lumps, even at breakfast when one needed the energy) and a plate with wand-sliced sausages, tomatoes, and a small pile of muesli-less strawberries. He hugged Spike's arm gratefully, and reached for his fork. Or tried to. It didn't work.

"You're going to have to let go of my arm with at least one hand first," Severus pointed out, caught on a tremulous point of balance between appalled and laughing at him. He wasn't alone, either. Evan scowled.

"Not much sleep?" Narcissa asked, her eyebrows up.

"I woke up around four," Severus answered when Evan took too long sorting out his mouth, "and he was looking through papers. You'd have thought he didn't care about getting back into the class and hadn't been drooling over getting to work on cramming runes into textures."

A pause, but Avery, you had to give it to him, wasn't shy about admitting when he didn't know, especially if he didn't care. "Huh?"

"Like cross-hatching or stippling," Severus explained. Evan hugged his arm again for knowing that. Avery didn't look enlightened.

"Can't send them all," Evan told Narcissa. It came out rather mumbled. He'd slept fitfully to begin with, once they'd gotten back to bed. Then, around three, he'd realized that sending all the letters he and Narcissa had planned would be overkill and, therefore, ineffective, and gotten up to cull the crop.

"Can't we?" Narcissa asked, surprised. She was quick like that.

"Clumsy."

"I suppose," she allowed, disappointed. She lost her temper very seldom, but when the world wasn't going as it ought to, she liked as many people as possible to be crystal clear on exactly why she was displeased and how they personally were going to placate her.

Severus looked at them. After a good swallow of tea, Evan realized he was hoping for an explanation. He wasn't getting one, so Ev just raised his eyebrows sleepily at him. Severus rolled his eyes and went back to his own letter.

Evan was more awake by the time he'd finished it and sat back with a blank look. "All right there, Spike?"

"Did you know about this?" Severus asked Narcissa suspiciously.

"Really, Severus, I haven't read your mail," she said reproachfully, endeavoring to look hurt. He _mmm_ed at her suspiciously.

"What is it?" Evan asked.

"He wants to _hire_ me for the summer," Severus said. His inscrutable expression was actually inscrutable, even to Evan. Or, at least to an Evan working off four hours of sleep. He was lucky he hadn't walked into any walls before he'd gotten his tea.

"Hire you?" Evan repeated blankly. Disingenuous blankness was something of an effort at his current level of wakefulness, even after the tea and even though it really was news to him But he had known Malfoy would have some plan, and he couldn't let on even that. If Spike thought it hadn't been Malfoy's idea start to finish, he'd take it as charity and become most unpleasant.

Severus nodded, expressionless. "He says his father does a sort of quality assessment of the Diagon shops every year for the Ministry. Is that true?"

"Sure, Naj," Wilkes said, looking as bleary as Evan still felt. "_Cognoscat Emptor_."

"Buyer, be aware?" Severus's hackles went down a little. "I think I've seen that. In Nottingham."

Wilkes nodded. "They do Diagon Alley every summer, and they get each half of the other commercial streets every other year. It comes out at the end of July. Not that everyone doesn't shop in Diagon for school anyway, but at least one knows the options. They sell them at the information centers, I think the funds go to… er…"

"Profits go to the Ministry's events budget," Mulciber said with assurance. One of his mums was on that committee. "Malfoy's father got an award for Special Services to the Ministry when they stopped having to reuse those moldy fifty-year-old Self-Twining Streamers. They'd been giving people allergies."

"You mean people had been reacting to the mold?" Spike asked dubiously.

"No, people would sit under them and suddenly be allergic to apples. Or the color yellow. Or E-flat. That sort of thing. Anyway, what about it?"

"Slughorn's told him I'm up to evaluating common potions ingredients and most of the potions you don't need to have passed your NEWTs before tackling."

"May I?" Evan took the letter. Also more tea, and more sugar, although not so much. Spike looked at him in surprise, but unless the elves were going to give him coffee, caffeine by itself was not going to be enough.

Malfoy, Evan thought, had been more clever than Ev would have expected. He'd just-lightly-enough laced into the letter the implication that he wanted Severus almost as much because he'd be cheap labor as for his skills. Spike was a lot more comfortable refusing to be taken advantage of than he was accepting gifts or favors.

Malfoy (or his father) wanted samples of Severus's brewing. And for one of the Master-brewers who'd be evaluating the advanced potions to check how good he really was at checking how fresh things were, and perhaps to ask him a few questions. That probably meant 'exhaustively interrogate him over several hours,' but it was Potions. Severus would probably get all Ravenchirpy and make the examiner stagger off whimpering with his indefatigable enthusiasm.

He wrote that he knew Severus didn't have a Floo connection, and that his equipment might not be up to such a big job. Therefore he suggested that Severus spend the summer at the manor, where there could be really good facilities set up within a day or two. He wrote enticingly of access to his family library. He suggested that, since Severus was taking Care of Magical Creatures, Severus might enjoy being introduced to the winged horses his father bred.

He apologized for his indelicacy, but had to stress that the Manor was almost always a working environment, especially when a social one: there were always Ministry workers and investors coming to and fro. Giving them extraneous things to think about wasn't good for business, and so Severus would have to be dressed on a spectrum of formal to professional-informal at all times. Malfoy understood that this would be an imposition for an underaged student who wouldn't yet have built up a professional wardrobe. He hoped Severus would regard this in the nature of a uniform rather than an impertinence, and wouldn't dream of asking him to both put up with and pay for Malfoy's father's tailor, who would (Malfoy admitted) probably take some putting up with.

He suggested an amount for Severus's pay which was on the cheap side of fair for a season's work that would include room and board, but hastened to add that it would be negotiable once Severus had proven what he could do.

Evan passed the note to Narcissa. She read it rather more quickly than he had, and they looked at Severus. Still without expression, he extracted a quill and a bit of parchment.

Evan and Narcissa nearly fell over each other telling him it was a good offer, a fair offer, would he please _just think about it first?!_ Heads were turning even from other tables, but they couldn't _possibly _let him go home to the cavemuggle his mother didn't seem to be able to protect him from, not in the shape these last few months had left him in.

"I don't need to think about it," Severus said, his face still wooden. He put the parchment down and wrote,

_Malfoy—_

_My apologies for the delay. Narcissa seems to have high expectations for my DADA marks, and most solicitously stole my mail yesterday to remove all distractions. So, really, they ought to be her apologies—but probably aren't._

_In regards to the job, it sounds more interesting than my current summer plans. Negotiating after evaluation is reasonable. As I couldn't hope to match wits with you or your father in any financial arena, I may ask a friend to speak for me. Madam Chang of Chepstow and I have an existing arrangement that will require my absence for a few hours each week and for which I'll need use of your floo. I wouldn't anticipate it cutting into my productivity. _

_ As to the matter of outfitting, it seems a frivolous (not to say strange) use of your money, but as it is your money I can have little opinion, I suppose. Throw in a good dueling instructor and access to a wand that won't get me expelled while school's out and I'll wear a lace pinny for my brewing apron if you like._

_SS_

_p.s.: That last not advised. Lace is a terrible idea in the stillroom._

Then he rolled it up, gave it to Malfoy's ostentatious eagle-owl along with a lump of bacon, and applied himself to his eggs.

Evan had to stuff a whole sausage into his mouth to keep from whooping.

"What were your summer plans?" Narcissa asked curiously. She was restraining herself better, but she'd presumably had more sleep.

Severus shrugged. "Help Mam, make things to sell next term. We have a library now, so… be there a lot." He didn't say _avoid Evans if she's even there,_ but the thought crossed him visibly, like a passing dark cloud.

"That's it?" Avery asked, incredulous. He was going to India, although it would be a working holiday for his father.

"There's more scenery than anything exciting to do," Severus said, which Evan thought was a neat way around admitting that his family was stuck in a muggle-polluted dump with a smelly river and no indoor plumbing.

They hadn't attracted much attention at breakfast, but afterwards the change in their modus operandi was obvious to anyone who was looking. They split into two groups, Evan, Spike, Narcissa and Wilkes lurking in the corridor with the rest of the examinees and the other five wandering off. They all had the day off, since obviously no one had taken Muggle Studies.

Perhaps not 'obviously.' Reg had briefly considered it, in a 'Bella says we'll be ruling over them soon; shouldn't we know how to explain it's for their own good and help them make transitions' sort of way. A combination of his mother hitting the roof, some of Severus's pre-Hogwarts schoolbooks, and Narcissa's explaining that Divination was the only semi-formal instruction in Reading People you got at Hogwarts had dissuaded him.

Lockhart was taking it, but he didn't count and no one held it against him. It might, Slytherin thought, actually have been the most practical thing he'd ever done. Oh, he _said_ it was _Because it was his life's dream to wander the world and you never knew who you might run into!_ Popular opinion suspected he might have been somewhat influenced by the rumor that it was the easiest elective there was. After Divi, anyway, which was his other one.

In Evan's year, Avery had openly bemoaned the fact that the second-easiest class was completely disgusting, and waffled for weeks. Avery might not be the Second Coming of Rowena, but his marks were better than Lockhart's. He hadn't sacrificed his principles for an easy E, in the end, and so he had the day off with Mulciber, Cattermole, Richmond, and Brown.

The rest of them attracted a certain amount of attention when the theory portion was over by wandering off onto the grounds in a phalanx, apparently going over their exam questions together. "What are we doing, Cissa?" Wilkes asked. "'This is the new business as usual,' or make a statement?"

"Severus?"

"This is your show," he said without looking up. He was _actually_ going over his exam questions, the loon. "If our message is that you've forced me into this, my thinking shouldn't come into it."

"I thought we did force him into it," Wilkes sort of asked.

Severus looked up then, and said, "I find myself less displeased than I'd like to be."

"'Thank you' takes fewer words, Spike," Evan yawned over Wilkes' wide-eyed shocked noise, and walked into something that caught creepily at his robe.

Startled, he fumbled his wand out and was going to hex the thing, but Spike caught his arm. "Have mercy," he advised, sliding Evan an amused look. "I'm sure that bush will never do it again."

"Impertinent," Evan declared, raising his chin like his mother. One had to maintain dignity in these situations.

"No doubt," Spike soothed him. He was making quite an effort not to laugh at Ev in public, which was appreciated even though it wasn't going very well. "I don't suppose there's any chance you got through the exam intact?"

"I can hope I scraped an A," Evan sighed. "It was like trying to think through a pillow. You only got a couple of hours more sleep than I did," he accused, this objectionable thought just occurring to him, "why aren't you an inferius?"

"Most people don't absolutely require nine uninterrupted hours to function, Ev," Spike told him, steering him away from something noisy. "Try not to trip over the first years, will you? Narcissa, I know I said my thinking shouldn't enter into it, but let's make sure no one can get behind Evan."

"Let's go to the lake," Narcissa decided. "It'll be nice and cool there. How do you think you did, Lucy?"

"I'm sure I got most of the actual language questions," Wilkes said, making a face, "but who can keep up with all those Beith-luis-nin variations? Trees and gestures and hand-lines! I thought I was getting out of palmistry if I avoided Divination. Stupid Futhark."

Severus murmured, "But Kon the Young learned runes to use, runes everlasting, the runes of life. Soon could he well the warriors shield, dull the swordblade and still the seas. Bird-chatter learned he, flames could he lessen, minds could he quiet and sorrows calm._"  
_

"Show-off," Narcissa noted fondly.

"Don't make him _stop,_" Evan told her, muzzily outraged. Wilkes would back him up. She appreciated Spike's voice, too.

"Nice work, Snivilla!" someone called, his laughing voice dripping with vile insinuation. "What'd you have to do to get bodyguards?"

They all turned.

"Who the hell is that?" Severus wondered aloud in a carrying I-ask-only-to-show-polite-interest voice.

"Sixth year," Wilkes said, matching his tone and volume with added vagueness. "Terrible snog. Goal-oriented and sloppy. I think his name's Wayne. Stain? Plain?"

It was Vane, and Wilkes didn't forget names.

"That's interesting," Spike replied. "Oh, no, wait. It isn't." His wand hand moving slightly beneath his robe, he murmured, "_Clypeum speculo,"_ and raised his voice again. "You'll have gotten at least an E, Narcissa, do you think?" Which was clumsy, but not a bad stab at casual considering how spitting-cat mad Evan could see (nearly taste) he was.

"Oh, I expect so," she said complacently as they turned away. There was a ringing _tinginginginging!_ just behind them, and then a yelp and some angry shouts as the mirror shield turned Vane's hexes back at him. "I don't think we'd covered earthworks in class, though. Did we?"

"Nope," Evan confirmed, resisting the urge to look back to see what the thugs had done to themselves.

"It was in the reading," Severus said. "I think we were due to talk about them the day Fabian Prewett came in with a note for Professor Babbling and then everyone shrank three feet."

"Oh, yes. Good thing he didn't try that in Charms," Wilkes said, wincing. "I like Flitwick."

"_Catmint!" _Evan cried in sudden realization. "_That's_ why the demon-thing was after you all the way to the Hospital Wing!"

"She's really just a cat, Ev," Spike said. It was a long-suffering tone, but his eyes were warm, and warming. His fingers moved a little, barely a millimeter. Evan wanted to be holding hands, too, those strong, fine bones their perfect shape again between his own, or firm and steady around the back of his neck, pulling him close, no need to bend down any more for a bliss...

"What about catmint, darling?" Narcissa asked, frowning.

"Evan," Spike dodged, "is not awake."

"I'm not awake after two hours of that bilge," Wilkes complained. She gave Severus a little nudge and said in a mock-disgusted tone, "I expect _you_ even got the stupid hill figures question."

"It may depend on who's marking them," Spike said cheerfully. "I gave them Glypha Og's Theory of Pre-Floo Portals all right, but I also violently disagreed with it. Might lose a few points there."

"Severus," Narcissa mourned loudly, "darling, it's an _exam,_ can't you just give them what they're asking for?"

"Not when it's completely unsupported and patently ridiculous!" he said, affronted, and railed about burial mounds and the Uffington White Horse all the way to the lake and probably long past the point where Evan fell asleep snuggled in his bony lap.

The original thugs seemed to be avoiding them, which no one was complaining about. Severus was getting sneaked looks of crawling shame from Lupin and Evan wary ones from Sirius, but Potter and Pettigrew were both pretending they didn't exist. Lesser thugs did try to have a go at them with depressing frequency, but they were of weaker stuff. Not a problem.

Between that state of affairs and the four of them sticking together, Severus was under control in the waiting room, although jittery. He hadn't felt he needed to take more of the peaceful potion (a perfectly good name, but vetoed by Severus for twinkly-twee alliteration, as if he himself didn't fall into it _all the time_ when he wasn't paying attention) before the practical. That was good, but he was still going to have to brew another batch over the weekend.

He did agree to a dose before they went into the Great Hall that evening. Depositing Wilkes with her other roommates, he, Evan, and Narcissa went up to the head table. Slughorn, McGonagall, and Flitwick all came alert, but they passed an only-interested Dumbledore with a civil nod and proceeded onto Professor Babbling.

"What can I do for you boys, Miss Black?" she asked.

"_Klaío sas éleos,_" Severus said with a hopeful _see, I study in your class; don't kick me_ face.

"Cry all you want, you won't get any mercy if you don't improve your accent," she said with a shudder.

"Oh, the déjà vu," Severus told Evan, who swallowed a smile.

She went on, "And _sas iketévo_ would have been better."

"I went literal-translation," he shrugged. "You don't second-guess the Bard."

"Fair enough. What sort of mercy are you looking for, Snape?"

"He needs none," Evan said, giving her a rueful smile. "I do."

"And it wants three of you?"

"Three is a nice, stable, well-balanced number," Narcissa said in her demure _fish all you like, you're just wasting bait_ voice.

Evan went on, "The thing is, I couldn't sleep last night. I think the practical was all right, but I couldn't possibly have done myself justice on the morning exam."

"It's true," Severus agreed. "He was a complete zombie until we made him have a kip before lunch. Could barely manage English. Tripped over a bush. Then nearly hexed it."

"Snaaaape," Evan whined, betrayed.

"For impertinence," Spike finished ruthlessly, grinning at him.

"A complete what?" Babbling asked, blinking.

"Er. Inferius."

"…Right. Well, sorry to hear it, Rosier, but I can't do anything about your marks."

"No, I know," he agreed. "But I've been doing well in class, haven't I? And I want to go on taking Runes next year. I was hoping you'd let me in even if I don't manage an E."

She nodded, unshocked, her graying curls bouncing. "I can't just let you in if you don't make scratch," she told him, "but exam fever's hobbled many a student before you. Do the summer homework and owl me right away if you don't make it. I'll have a make-up exam ready for you when you get back."

"Thanks, Professor," they chorused with varying levels of gratitude. Spike's didn't match Evan's, but was more fervent than Narcissa's. He'd been listening to Evan's glee over the independent-project prospects for months, and probably suspected there would have been boring moping. Which there might have been, Evan had to admit.

They made sure to look cheered obviously enough for even the Gryffs to read their faces as they went to join their housemates at the long table. The sour looks from Siri, Potter, and Pettigrew at Spike's pleasure were a thing of beauty and a joy for until pudding. Pudding at Hogwarts was its own joy.

Meals generally were, too, but June dinners trended coma-inducing in a doomed attempt to curb spring fever and end-of-term restlessness. They were worse than the Welcome Feast, which was also heavy but was mostly protein. During exam week the elves didn't even try to be subtle. Ev thought a table full of pasta, floury potatoes, rarebit, and cottage pie was overdoing it by a long shot. Many of the girls over fifteen got cross, miserable, or actively venomous about it.

Severus tended to read and peck through dinner. For his actual evening meal he visited the kitchens much later for apples and cheese, sandwiches, or sometimes, to everyone's aesthetic and philosophical disgust, raw vegetables. Not just cucumbers and tomatoes, either. He'd come back popping radishes, or chewing on a bulb of fennel or an onion.

On a night like tonight, Evan could see his point. After a meal like that, even if you'd been smelling more than eating it, you really wanted something like a radish or lemon. And actually the fennel wasn't bad. Good for the breath, too.

"Four exams left," Evan said later, stretching out on their joined bed.

The seventh-years had a party going downstairs, more for stress relief than because they seemed to feel much like celebrating. The music had been good and the elves had provided magnificently, as usual (so had Spike), but Evan had still been tired and Severus had wanted to prepare the ingredients for his potion.

"Five for me. Eight days," Severus agreed, slicing a few paper-thin disks off the base of a unicorn horn (courtesy of Hagrid, who seemed to think picking the shed ones up was a mere matter of litter control) onto his scale with a fine-toothed copper saw.

Evan rolled over to watch him. "Couldn't you just use your knife spell?" he asked. "Horns are nail-and-hair matter; I know you can configure it to cut that."

"Do you really want to know what exposure to copper before being powdered by hawthorn does for the horn?" Spike asked him with a crooked smile. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, working on a cutting board he'd affixed to the top of his footlocker.

"Do I?" he asked with a sigh. "The Potions exam is Monday."

"You don't need it," he was assured.

"You're not allowed to spend all weekend revising for Potions just because it'll be fun," Evan warned him.

"I suppose I oughtn't to pay attention to it at all," Severus admitted, making a face. "Or Creature Care. Kettleburn says the exam's focused on interaction, not anatomy, so focusing just on the other three should be all right."

"_History,_" Evan uttered darkly.

"Quite." He sighed. "It could be so interesting if it weren't for _Binns_."

"Well, you can't expect a dead man to bring a subject to life, Spike."

"Why not, if he can kill it," Spike complained, crushing the disks of shimmering horn with what was presumably his hawthorn mortar and pestle.

He had these and cutting boards in all of the thirteen wand woods. Evan just hoped he'd asked the trees nicely, because the odds of him having paid money for them were well below zero.

"I'd be _astounded_ if there've been more than a handful of students who went on to be historians the whole time he's been teaching. Or at least teaching while dead; I suppose he might have been better before he and his goblin fetish got into an immortal rut."

"I don't want to think about a ghost with a goblin fetish, Spike," Evan told him plaintively.

"Neither do the goblins, I'd imagine."

Severus had finished powdering both the horn and the moonstone and was stirring honey into his hellebore decoction before Evan spoke up again. "You won't get your back up and tell Malfoy you've changed your mind if I say I'm glad you're taking the job, will you?"

"What, and waste all your work? The Shieldtail would kill me," Severus said, dry. Evan sat up and looked at him. "Oh, don't worry, I'll bring Slughorn a bottle of mead, too. I'm sure he'll be as pleased by unearned credit as earned."

"How did you know?"

This won him an eyebrow. "Malfoy doesn't need to go looking for cheap labor. That and the cringing about the clothes instead of just saying 'you will be enabled and required to not embarrass my father' flat out had your hand all over it. He's not good at knowing when to be delicate. I might have said no, I don't know, but I would actually brew in lace to get some decent dueling lessons, at this point. And he does need an excuse for Narcissa to visit him as often as he wants her to. And she wants an excuse, too, doesn't she? I assume this was her idea to begin with. He likes you all right, but not enough to… not enough for this." He looked sharply at Evan, scowling. "Just tell me this doesn't leave you owing him."

"No," Evan said, still staring at him. "It doesn't. And we didn't _make_ him, Spike; he likes you. He doesn't get to talk with anyone else it's safe to show he's secretly a bit of a history boffin with, you know; that's not the family face. Narcissa told him you have dull summers, that's all, and I told him you'd throw a normal invitation back in his face. The rest of it was his idea."

"You're staring at me," Spike asked suspiciously.

"I—we just didn't think you'd realize," Evan said. "At least, not right away."

"I'm clumsy, not blind," Severus told him, and put the lid on his jar of syrup. There was something derisive in his voice, but Evan didn't feel it was aimed at him. "'When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.'"

"…Yes?"

"It's from a play." Seeing Evan was still looking at him politely, he elaborated, "About a small-p princewho may have taken a hacked-off ghost too seriously."

"Muggle play?"

Severus shrugged. "Before the separation was solid; who knows. Gloriana era." Evan nodded, and sighed. "What?"

"You make it sound good. You'll read history to me all weekend, won't you?" he asked, smiling wistfully. "Even if you're staying with Malfoy, International floo is tricky to arrange. We won't be staying anywhere more than a few weeks."

Spike's face closed in a little as he, too, thought about the upcoming months. He shifted his shoulders, forcing a cavalier attitude, and asked lightly and rhetorically, with an airy flick of his fingers, "However will you sleep without me."

"Very badly, I expect," Evan answered honestly. He was gratified on one level to watch the façade crumble into bleakness as Severus looked down, but there was something about it that pierced in soft places. "But you realize, this is the last time."

Severus looked up, guarded. "Meaning?"

"We'll be seventeen next year."

"What about it?"

"Age of majority, Spike." Evan propped himself up on his elbows, smiling.

"And unfettered access to my wand will be most appreciated, but what does it have to do with summer? If that's even the 'last time' you meant."

"Seventeen's old enough to rent."

Severus went very, very still. "Really. And?"

"And my parents won't mind if I want to go off on my own to do some concentrated study instead of another tour, as long as it isn't anywhere rough. We could rent a cottage somewhere scenic where you can stock up for seventh year, if Mr. Malfoy doesn't ask you back. Or flit about. And if he does ask you again, it shouldn't be difficult to get him to let you take his equipment, since you'll be using it for his project and most of his workers are off-site."

Severus had his hair over his face. "You can't imagine," he said, dripping with irony, "that you'd be comfortable anywhere I could half-afford. _I _wouldn't be comfortable anywhere I could half-afford."

"I'd say you ought to let my parents pay and not worry about it, but I do know who I'm talking to," Evan said, a little ironic himself. "What if you leave the rent to me and do the cooking? Mum and Dad wouldn't want to give up our elf all summer, and _I_ can't cook. The savings in takeaway alone—"

"Wouldn't _begin_ to cover it," Severus said, still behind his hair. "Scenic places fill up in the summer. Prices go over the moon."

"More for by-the-week places than for a full season," Evan argued, sitting up. "It's just teachers and students who get whole summers off. And we've both got tradable skills, Spike, we're _Slytherins_ with tradable skills. You really think we…" he paused and thought about it. "You really think I couldn't get us a decent rate? Or you could pay Mum back in product. She goes a bit mad over scents, and Linky goes through a lot of cleaning potions. You've no idea what good scents go for."

"Linky?"

"Our elf. He's a tartar; you'd like him. He used to hit me with a spoon when I tried for thirds on pudding. He _still_ hits me with a spoon when I mistake a vintage, or ask for one that doesn't go with the meal."

There was a little head-duck that meant a smile, but Severus didn't emerge.

"We can work out the details, Spike," Evan said, his insides tightening. He'd expected a little reluctance, but this looked serious. "Unless you really don't want to."

Severus looked completely away. Evan was starting to feel humiliation roil through him, which he only even recognized because he'd spent too much time around Bella growing up, when Spike finally did speak. "Ev, did you ever think we'd be friends when I met you?"

"Er… no…?"

"I expect the idea would have repelled you."

"Being, I would argue, _understandably_ ignorant, yes, it would have."

Severus picked himself up off the floor. Evan's throat tightened, but Severus climbed onto the bed and got behind him, sitting against the headboard. He gestured, and Evan warily let himself be drawn back, all wrapped up. He couldn't help leaning back, or the reflexive way his back relaxed. Stupid body, thinking it knew he was safe. "You remember when Narcissa decided we were all going to be friends, and I told you I wasn't going to kiss you?"

"Cerberus," Evan recalled, smiling a little almost despite himself.

Severus dropped a kiss onto his temple, and stayed to nuzzle behind his ear. "Did you ever think then we'd be like this?"

"I was _twelve,_ Spike. This sort of thing wasn't really on my mind."

"Nor mine. Even if it had been… you've no idea what muggles are like if they get the idea you're queer. Maybe it's not as bad in the cities, but at home… not even to be thought of. Being _bookish _is dodgy at home."

Evan raised an eyebrow, turning to look at him. "Sorry, Spike, but I don't think there's any hiding you're a bit odd. I suppose you could have passed for normal in Ravenclaw, but—"

"It means tumbling people you couldn't spawn with," Severus cut him off. "Without potions muggles don't have. Or even just fancying them. It's worse than being muggleborn is here. At least as bad as being a werewolf. Werewolves at least have strength and a lot of immunities going for them. I told you that first time you kissed me: muggle boys don't kiss other boys. Well, they may, but it's a risk. They can pound you to a pulp or kill you and no one would care. Your parents would be told it was too bad but you shouldn't have flaunted how unnatural you are, you'd been asking for it. The pol—the aurors might do a pro-forma investigation, but most of them wouldn't put much effort in."

Evan stared at him. "That's _insane._"

Spike's lip curled bitterly, which he might have thought was an ironic smile. "Everyone has to have someone to be insane about, don't they? Someone whose existence makes them feel superior?"

"…We're off topic," Evan said. It was a dodge away from what felt like the start of a very uncomfortable thought, yes. But the topic was _important_. "What's your point?"

"That even if this idea," he gave Evan a squeeze, "had occurred to me, I'd never have let myself so much as entertain the thought if you hadn't been so unutterably blithe about the whole business, as if it were completely normal. And if I hadn't seen all the indiscriminate snogging already to back you up," he added meticulously.

"It is completely normal."

"I worked that out. It takes a bit of wrapping one's mind around, though. If you grow up in a muggle area, the idea doesn't come naturally no matter who your parents are. At least, an area like mine. Maybe it's different in the cities. Or where there's more money. Mam says poor people are the worst snobs there are. Got to have pride if you haven't got anything else, and all."

Evan had gotten a bit lost, and Spike sounded like he was rambling anyway, peeling off on one of his bitterer tangents. "So?"

"So you're going off for three months." His grip tightened, but his voice hardened, too. "You'll get used to sleeping alone again, and you'll have as much public and private company as you want. You won't have any trouble there. And then you'll get back to school and remember all the ways I annoy you."

"You're the one who gets annoyed by everything, Spike," he said, frowning.

"My point is," Severus said tightly, "you think you'll be just the same next year, but why would you be? You've stayed who you are at the core so far, I think, since I've known you, but how you've felt has changed enormously, hasn't it. You don't know what's going to happen and you don't know what you're going to be like or want next summer."

Evan pursed his lips and tilted his face up at Spike. "Maybe, but if we follow the trajectory of the existing data, the clear extrapolation is that I'll be so hideously besotted with you I can't breathe."

Unwillingly, Severus smiled, a sad little twist of a smile, brushed Evan's cheek softly with the backs of his fingers. "Extrapolation is about as reliable as a crystal ball, Ev. Especially when the most recent data points have taken place in an… an unusual context. A context, please god, unlikely to be repeated."

Evan pulled away to face him squarely. "All right. Neither of us took Divination, and we don't expect to see the future. You tell me whether spending next summer together sounds good to you _right now_."

Severus hunched and let his hair fall down again. "I'm just trying to be realistic," he said in a trying-to-be-bland voice, stiff with misery. This was about the only thing he'd done in recent memory that Evan could actually remember being annoyed by, but was reasonable if he was convinced he was going to be dropped.

Which itself was _enormously_ insulting, but given that his oldest friend had chucked him so unequivocally only last night, Ev was willing to give him some leeway.

He said, "I'm going to take that as a yes, and I will make a bet with you."

Severus's head tilted up enough that one dark eye was visible. "A bet."

"A bet. If I still want to spend next summer with you by April—"

"May."

"No, April. Even if it's not NEWT year it'll be a NEWT-_classes_ year, and there'll be arrangements to make once we've decided where to go."

Spike thought about this, and then shrugged with a little grimace. "All right. But I still say it's too much time afterwards for you to change your mind in."

"Say it if you must. But if I do still want to, by April, then unless _you_ don't want to spend the summer with _me—_"

He caught the briefest of rueful, sardonic flickers flash across Spike's eyes, and had to tamp down very hard on himself to keep from grinning like a maniac and pouncing him. The headboard was made of quite hard wood, after all. It_ might_ even be thicker than Severus's skull, although that was sometimes rather difficult to imagine.

"—you don't get to argue with me about rent even if I decide I can't take your cooking and we eat out all the time. You can make Mum some perfume, but that's it."

"And if you don't want to?"

Evan shrugged. "Then I suppose you get the satisfaction of being right."

"Joy," Severus uttered, deadpan. "This is something of a lose-lose proposition for me, you realize. Both of us, actually. Not to mention your mother."

"It isn't," Evan told him, although Mum would think it was until she learned better. "We both win or we both lose. And I will _further_ bet with you," now he did grin, as Spike regarded him warily, "that _next_ April I ask if you want to take a flat with me. Same terms."

"Unacceptable," Severus told him, staring. "Additionally, let it be noted that you're mad."

"Same terms, but you can pay for groceries once you're working? I will insist on living somewhere livable."

"No."

"All right, same terms until you've been taking in at least the amount of the rent in wages or sales, not including working supplies, for one year. Then you can pay half-everything, or a quarter if you keep doing the cooking. Because I really cannot cook."

"You do all right in potions."

"I'm not sure cooking's the same thing."

"Of course it is. It's easier."

"So you say. Are we on?"

"…Three months."

"A year."

"Six months?"

"My bet, Spike. If you think you're going to lose it, don't take it."

Severus mumbled, "Don't _want_ to win, just know I will."

"Are we on?" Evan pressed, grinning at him.

Severus scowled. "Don't aim that thing at people, you could put someone's eye out. And if you're wrong?"

He eyed his Spike. "What would you want—what would you _accept_ from me in a case like that?"

"If we spent next summer together, and then you changed your mind about after school."

"Right."

"Nothing. Blood."

"That's what I thought. Pick a charity to get fifty galleons, then. Are we on?"

"…You're just going to go on saying that, aren't you."

"I am indeed. So are we on?"

Severus resisted Evan's winning eyes and massive personal magnetism for another moment (not a particularly frightening one; at this point Evan was almost sure he was just being himself) then threw up his hands. "_Fine_. I'm going to write your mother and tell her you've gone mental and it's _not my fault_."

"It is _completely and utterly_ your fault," Evan told him, buoyant, and did tackle him. "How long do you think that party will go on for?"

Severus blinked up at him, rather wide eyed. "They bought two gallons each of Soberall, Hangunder, and Stomach Settler. Apparently someone shriveled the third-years into cowed and shame-faced raisins with tiny shreds of common sense instead of self-esteem after the last party."

"_Excellent,_" Evan sighed, pleased Spike had liked his work but not particularly interested in the third-years at the moment. Or, really, ever. He smoothed Spike's probably-substantially-more-than-six-year-old shirt down his chest, smiling fondly down at them both. "I can't wait to see what you replace this with. In fact, I demand pictures."

"Denied," Spike told him, his mouth quirking. "I'm not buying a camera. You'll have to wait until we get back."

"Then you have to send it to me," he said, willing to be reasonable. "And I want the potion you put in your soap."

"What?" he laughed.

"You heard me," Evan told him. "I'm going to have Linky do my laundry with it."

"You are not. Your clothes would get yellowish and you'd go all fretful and sulky because you wouldn't look right."

"I don't sulk," he said, surprised.

"Oh, of course not. Whatever was I thinking."

It wasn't a good idea to argue with Spike when he was condescending to humor you, so Evan dropped it. "Well, the linens, then. Maybe the delicates."

"Evan, that is _incredibly_ creepy," Spike told him, but he was still laughing.

"You need to stop worrying about things like that and do what you want," Evan said airily. "It makes life much easier."

"I'll make you a sachet with the herbs to put in your suitcase, you hedonistic lunatic," Spike said, shaking his head and smiling. "I've no idea how the stuff would react to laundry soap."

"Make me lots."

"You are really the most," Spike began, as reproachful as he could manage, but by then Evan had his shirt unbuttoned. He'd started attending reserve team practices again once he'd been sure getting a bloody nose wouldn't give all his teammates something dreadful . Between those and all his extracurricular brewing, his chest and arms weren't half as scrawny as he looked fully dressed. Evan liked that. It felt like a secret for him. He'd get to see Spike without the yellowing soap-potion eventually, too, if it was the last thing he did.

The previous evening had wrung Evan dry, left him limp, tender, and charged like a crystal, but (and? because?) he'd had only three senses to work with. There had been the tie over his eyes, and this: Severus was usually quiet, or at least coherent, when he was active and intent and in control. The rest of the week, he'd been higher pitched, not sounding quite himself.

Cello music was the best sound in the world, and Evan lost himself in improvising until his instrument gave out with one last gorgeous, helpless, choked-off wail, unstrung.

By the time Avery and Mulciber had staggered in and fallen into their beds with twin thumps, Evan and Severus were safely decent and tucked in behind their curtains. Ev had turned Spike to the mattress and lain down on him the way Spike sometimes lay on him. This had apparently been a brilliant move, because Spike had gone stiff for a minute and then melted, so relaxed it almost felt like someone else's back.

"Spike," Evan murmured, when Severus's breathing was just beginning to even out.

"Mm?"

"I'm going to win."

"Took three years of divination in the last three seconds?" Spike asked drowsily, his foot rubbing Evan's up and down, slowly. They were lined up so perfectly Ev wasn't sure he'd be able to wait till morning. He'd never known Spike had so much self control. Well, yes he had. But not _so_ much.

"No; you were working on bad information. I'm holding you to it, though."

"My information is always excellent." It would have been haughtier if he hadn't been sleepy enough to sound about eight years old.

"You said how I feel might change."

"Well, it might."

"It might," he agreed. "But. What you said last night, about…" He didn't want to say Evans's name in their bed. "About being in a grey world, about not being awake to good things on your own." Spike nodded, tense enough to feel like himself again. Evan kissed the join of his neck, and said quietly into it, "I told you I understood. You and the painting, you're the only things that make me feel anything, much."

Severus went still under him, but not stiff. He stayed immobile for a long few breaths, and then reached for Evan's arm, tugging the underside to him under the blankets. After spending all day racking his brains over them, Evan had no trouble recognizing the runes being drawn into his skin.

Teiwaz, hagalaz, ehwaz, sowulo, teiwaz, isa, laguz, laguz, perth, laguz, ansuz… He had no trouble turning the letters to English, either, once he'd worked out it was just alphabet-substitution. He pulled back, turned Spike to look at him.

The almonds had turned to narrow obsidian knives, defiant. "Tell anyone and I'll deny it. Even if you try to show it to someone in a pensieve," Spike told him truculently, jaw jutted even farther out than his nose, "there's nothing to show and nothing to hear."

"Sub rosa," Evan promised, full of something too solemn for smiling.

"Well spotted, yes," Spike said dryly, "I am indeed under the Rosier."

So of course Evan had to thump him, and of course he thumped back, and it led to a lot of wrestling and squawking that had a very cranky Mulciber yanking back their curtains to thump them both. So they ganged up on him until Avery started making very whiny silence-demanding threats that absolutely necessitated a collective wand response. He lumbered up out of bed at them in literally-stung outrage, and then Spike hit him with a pillow.

"What are you," Avery asked him, looking down in amazement, "a twelve year old girl?"

"Anytime I want to be," Spike said loftily, wafting an airy hand. "Polyjuice is a breeze."

"Doesn't that take about a month to brew?" Mulciber asked, raising an eyebrow. "Slow breeze."

"Salazar be praised," Severus told the ceiling. "He may pass on Monday after all."

So Mulciber hit him with a different pillow.

Evan watched them all go at it (Spike was losing so, so, badly, the shrimp, but his terrible language was spluttered through laughter, so that was fine) and dug through his trunk for his permanent ink. It would wash off with the dead skin eventually, but would do as a temporary measure. The only questions were what inker would he ask to make it look as breathtaking as it was, and would he tell his parents first.

He'd never thought about tattoos before, even when Mulciber hinted he had an amazing one planned, but he was as certain about this as he was that he was winning his bet. Probably he wouldn't let them know. Maybe not at all, almost certainly not until he came of age. They wouldn't talk him out of it, or into having it spelled off afterwards, and he wasn't interested in an argument. _The still place, the balance, the hearth_: he wasn't walking out of this room without that right where Spike had put it. It was going to stay there, too.

* * *

**Chapter art** (links in profile:  
OWL post-mortems (and lap-banditry) by the lake  
"It is _completely and utterly_ your fault." :D

Severus was quoting the Norse saga _The Rigsthul_, and _Hamlet_, and later referring to the January '73 chapter of A Key called Promise.


	11. June 20

**Warnings **for Messed Up Politics, only mostly academic-flavored, only mostly fictional. Sadly, the India bits are based in RL history. (I've made the Wizarding version more intense and tyrannical than Wiki suggests the RL one was. Because Rowlingverse.)

Sooooo this chapter is going to royally piss off the Justice For Severus League. And rightly so! But two things:

1. Rowlingverse. Not AU. Or at least, trying not to be. vOv  
2. It's _not_ an AU, and I have (flimsy but uncontradicted) _canonical support for, _ha. Well. _Slytherin_ story, O Paladins. We're getting there, I promise.

Just for you-know-who-you-are, let me elaborate: _bISeH'eghlaH'be'chugh latlh Dara'laH'be'_: _meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoH neH_. (_qoH vuvbe' SuS, __tugh qoH nachDaj je chevlu'ta'_.) _g__hobe'! __bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'._*

(For a hot minute there it looked like the spellchecker didn't have a problem with that. I was all impressed. Le sigh.)

* * *

Fortunately, the knock at their door on their last morning at school didn't come before Severus and Evan had their beds untied and back where the elves had originally put them. It was fortunate because the knocker was Slughorn. He would have been obliged to make problems for them next year. Evan would have had to obliviate him and then everyone else in the room, Severus (probably) excepted.

"All packed up, boys?" he asked genially. They all made _nearly_ noises, eying him cautiously. "Well, don't let me stop you." He chatted with them about their summer plans while they finished up, telling them all who to be sure to give his best to if the chance came up.

Evan's family wasn't the only one that would be traveling. All business, of course. Mulciber's family called it a social visit with friends in Bulgaria, but _nobody_ went to Bulgaria in winter or summer just for fun. Unless they were really mad about skiing or entymology. Or the Dark Arts.

Avery's would be in India for a while. His father worked in International Wizarding Relations (_oddly enough_, nearly everyone who worked there had Auror training and took lunch with someone from the DMLE's Foreign Affairs office at least once a week). He was going to be reporting on how the new Compulsory Squib Sterilization Initiative (running in harness with the larger-scale family planning program among their muggles) was going.

(Badly, by all accounts. There were rumors that near-squibs were being forcibly sterilized too, and half-bloods as young as eight who hadn't shown magic yet, and rumors that the old thuggee tribes were stirring up trouble. It wasn't just a rumor that there had been assassination threats against the Indian President, Prime Minister, and Minister for Magic from within the magical community.)

Not unexpectedly, the list of people Slughorn was telling them to say hello to (read: forge connections with) was long enough that they each ended up taking notes. This was par for the course, although it more usually happened at Slug Club meetings. Less usually, Severus was included. Slughorn expected him to run into all sorts of people while he was staying with Malfoy. Less exotic people, granted. More than once, one of the other boys told Spike something along the lines of, "Oh, say hello to Uncle Calpurnicus from me, too."

When they were completely packed, Slughorn said, "Now, boys, I just wanted to have a word with you before you get on the train. I've already spoken with the girls in your year."

Wordlessly, they all sat on their trunks.

"We don't usually discuss this sort of thing with students," Slughorn said, looking regretful, "but under the circumstances I thought it would be best to tell you a little something about how authority is assigned at this school."

Barely a heartbeat later Spike was on his feet, white, his fists clenched. _"No,_" he gritted.

"Sit down, Spike," Evan said warningly, reaching out to wrap a hand around his wrist.

_"No,_" he demanded, his eyes locked with Slughorn's, so taut he was trembling.

"Snape," Mulciber snapped. "Get it together."

"_They're making Potter a prefect,_" Severus spat, blazing tightly at Slughorn. _"Aren't you_."

"What?" Evan asked. Asked, not yelped. Definitely not. "They wouldn't do that," he said, eyes on his Head of House.

"It's not my decision, m'boy," Slughorn said with an understanding and unhappy smile. "And it hasn't been made yet. But I'm afraid Professor McGonagall hasn't much choice in the matter."

"Not much choice!" Severus repeated, his voice going silky-soft. All the hairs on Evan's neck stood up. He also had to cross his legs. "Not much choice but to reward him after—"

"Ah," Slughorn said. "Yes, I was afraid you'd take it like that. That's why I wanted to speak with you. Oh, please do sit down, Severus; this isn't because anyone is _happy_ with him, I assure you."

"How do you decide it, then?" Avery asked, looking puzzled. "Not that I wanted the job myself, but Rosier's such a lazy arse, he's the last bloke I would have thought."

Evan considered taking offense. Eh.

"Can you tell Antimony why I picked Evan over the rest of you, Severus?" Slughorn asked. It wasn't the way he asked Severus questions in class. Then he was either giving him a chance to show his stuff or resigned because no one else in the room had volunteered. Now he looked like he really wanted to know whether Severus knew.

"Avery works too hard to do well in class," Spike said with unusual diplomacy, made careful by cold fury. "He couldn't do evening rounds and keep his grades up without quitting Quidditch. Mulciber's too politically active; you'd look like you were taking sides in an issue I don't think you want to touch. And if you gave it to me you'd be weakening the authority of the post. Half the House wouldn't listen to someone born like me no matter what, and besides, you can't have a prefect who keeps on losing fights."

Slughorn looked deeply interested by this analysis. "All excellent points, Severus, but you haven't caught the essential one. Evan, can you tell him?"

Ev shrugged. "Because my mum's a Black," he told Severus. "Reggie will be a prefect next year, too, I expect."

"Well, that's a stupid reason," Severus said, annoyed. "There are perfectly good reasons, among which your parents do not number. Admittedly the only reasons for saddling Reg with a job that's likely to give him a nervous breakdown are called Rabastan, Thorfinn, Amycus, and Gilderoy, but…"

Slughorn's moustache swallowed his smile, with difficulty. "Now, now, Severus. Tell him why it's not a stupid reason," he told Evan.

He shrugged again, agreeably. "The Blacks are one of the oldest families there are, Spike," he told his friend. "They may not be quite the richest in money any more, but there are Black fingers in every pie. If a law gets passed, it's because the Blacks let it happen. Everyone knows that who grew up in the wizarding world and isn't," he paused, because even Lockhart _felt_ it, if he didn't _know_ it, and finished "you know, Lovegood. Blacks are expected to be in charge, even if they don't have the job title. Not everyone likes it, but everyone _expects_ it. Put a Black in charge and no one says 'it should be me.' At worst it's 'I would have been better but what can you do.'"

"Exactly!" Slughorn applauded. "I'd award you five points, m'boy, but the Cup is, alas, already bestowed."

Ravenclaw had gotten it. Everyone with the possible exception of Hufflepuff (and the odd Gryffindor who'd been living under a stump and didn't know why their points had taken a dive) could about live with that. Evan was looking forward to sitting in a Great Hall decorated in _tasteful_ colors all year for once. They'd had the cup last year, and that had been satisfying, but Ravenclaw colors were better to look at. Copper would be better than bronze, and if it were a richer blue, more cobalt than navy... actually, a purer silver with a dark hunter green would improve the Slytherin banners just as much. There was no helping anything yellow-toned hung on grey walls, though, even in torchlight.

"What you said about weakening the authority of the post is the main thing, Severus," the professor went on. "You boys and girls see the prefecture as a reward, I know, but that's not it at all—or only rarely. As a rule there are two reasons to make someone a prefect: because they're already the strongest voice in their year, or in hopes that they'll rise to the challenge."

"Snape is definitely the loudest voice in our year," Mulciber commented, droll.

"Ah," Slughorn wagged a finger, "but, Meredith, Severus has been sensible enough not to rely on his own authority, haven't you, m'boy?"

"Well, I don't have any," Severus said practically. Also inaccurately. Evan had watched him with the lower forms, third year and below. Even the ones who sneered about him behind his back for his blood and the ragged edges on his faded robes looked at their feet instead of talking back when he was telling them off these days, when he wasn't in the mood for give-and-take. They did what he told them to, even if they were nasty about him the whole time. He _breathed_ authority.

Right up until the moment he stopped to think about it. Or started on his Transfigurations homework. And even then one got the impression he wasn't so much lost or frustrated as trying with moderately strained patience to communicate in Japanese to a Russian with only an English picture-dictionary for help.

"How much would you have if I gave you the badge?" Slughorn asked.

He snorted. "Half the ones who tolerate me now would suddenly decide they didn't care about points." Mulciber nodded emphatically, obviously still smarting from Someone He Wasn't Allowed To Kill Saying His First Name Out Loud.

The two of them usually got along well enough, and almost always without any serious attempts at killing each other. That, though, was because Severus walked very carefully with him: would argue and shout in private, making it clear he wasn't intimidated and couldn't be pressured, but supported him in public and certainly never tried to tell him what to do. To persuade, yes, but nothing stronger. Being a half-blood, to Mulciber's way of thinking, meant you were mudblood on one side and blood-traitor on the other. One could work to scrub the filth off, and _maybe_ even succeed, but there was only so far one could rise above it.

He would have gotten very ugly fast, if someone like that had been put in even nominal control of him. It had taken him years to get even as tolerant as he was now, and his tolerance did not extend beyond Severus. Nor was anyone in the House under the impression that they'd be more than nodding acquaintances once they weren't forced together by mutual enemies and a shared bedroom.

He was far from the only one who felt that way. Most of Reg's dorm did. Reg rather felt as though he ought to, and still did in theory, but he took after Mum and Uncle Orion's side of the family, and wasn't very good at sticking fanatically to fanaticism in the face of overwhelming evidence.

"I had an easy choice with your year," Slughorn told them. "Professor McGonagall wasn't so fortunate. Last summer she gave the wizard's badge to the strongest one who even seems to notice that rules exist, and hoped he'd rise to it."

"So much for that," Spike said coldly.

"Yes, indeed," Slughorn sighed. "It's a great pity. I had hopes for the boy myself, but his roommates have such _strong_ personalities. It was a noble experiment, but a failed one. The badge loses all its power when it's in conflict with a force like that."

"So you're going to _give it_ to that force?" Spike demanded, his eyes going stormy again.

Slughorn spread his hands. "What choice will she have, Severus? Peter Pettigrew wouldn't be any better than Remus Lupin, and he's the sort who's likely to become a puppet tyrant, given a little power, in fear of losing it and becoming a laughingstock."

"Becoming!"

Slughorn knew when to ignore Severus and keep talking. "And even if the Blacks were in good odor in Gryffindor... well. Don't let on I said this, boys, but young Sirius is just as likely to turn a badge into a sweetie and feed it to one of the little lions as an experiment as he'd be to wear it. James Potter may not be the world's finest role model, but he has charisma, you know. He's one of the strongest leaders of his House even without the badge; pretending anyone else is in charge has been a rather poor joke."

Severus's mouth had twitched while the rest of them snorted about Sirius, but he wasn't mollified. "Then she shouldn't give it to any of them," he said stonily. "Give it to someone in another year. Or a second witch. Or no one. Giving official power to _any_ of them elevates what they've done—what we both know perfectly well they're going to go on doing, sir—and gives it approval. Let it be seen that the school knows none of them is fit to lead."

"An interesting idea," Slughorn said thoughtfully, stroking his moustache. "It would be a terrible departure from tradition—oh," he added, wagging his finger again, "I know you'd say 'good,' m'boy—"

"Yes, I would," Severus said, quiet but hot. "That underlines it."

"But to upset the traditions of Hogwarts just for them… can you see, Severus, that it would make them more special, put them even more outside the law than they feel already?"

That caught Severus up short. He looked even stormier, but it was his _goddamit, that IS a good point, you bastard_ face.

"It's like why we had to invite them to the contest, Spike," Evan said sympathetically, wanting to take his hand and squeeze it. "Tell them they can't come to the party and they won't just crash it, they'll leave it in smithereens."

"Quite right, Evan, quite right," Slughorn said, and leaned over to pat Severus's shoulder. "I can only imagine how you must feel, Severus. But if you think instead, you must see all we'll be much better off with James Potter on the inside pissing out."

"You know he's going to strip us of every point we've got every time he sees me," Severus told their Head, sounding tired, falling behind his hair. "You'll have a job of work keeping control of this House if the kids get the idea points don't mean anything. If they think there's no way they can win the prize they're supposed to be working for. They'll look for another way to prove they're the best. An outside-the-box way. This is _Slytherin._"

"Oh, I don't think that will be my job," Slughorn said, twinkling gooseberry jollity at them. Taking the hint, Evan made a face. "But you needn't fear he'll be under the impression his power is unlimited or unchecked. You may trust us for that, at least, boys," he said more seriously, and levered himself up off Avery's bed with a groan.

"Be sure you're downstairs with your things in twenty minutes," he told them on his way to the door. "We'll have a brief House meeting before it's time to leave for the train. Prizes for the coloring charm contest, that sort of thing."

"Off to tell Fenshaw and Yaxley first?" Severus asked moodily from under his limp black curtain, not seeming to particularly care.

"Clever boy!" Slughorn chuckled. "Yes, I daresay they'll be just as pleased as you lot. It'll have to be rather sprung on next year's fifth-year prefects, I'm afraid, unless the explanation gets about to them over the summer somehow."

Evan caught that hint, too, and made another face. Reggie was going to have an _awful_ summer, no question about it, and Sirius would make it worse for him once his badge came. At least he and Narcissa would be able to visit Severus this year. Reg would almost have to, in fact. Aunt Dru would want to make sure Narcissa was properly chaperoned on her visits to the Manor, and then Narcissa and Malfoy would probably scrape him off on Spike as fast as wizardly possible. Evan just hoped neither of the boys would actually die of laughing-where-Narcissa-could-hear-them.

At the door, Slughorn turned and said innocently to Severus, "Miss Selwyn's the winner in her year, you know, I'm pleased to say. She's coming along rather well; so is her friend Miss Goldstein. Do you think you'll be seeing anything of either of them over the summer?"

Severus emerged far enough to let an _I hate you_ look crawl over to their professor, but not one of the ones with real hate in it. "I suppose anything's possible," he said, glumly resigned to being assigned explaining matters to the two top contenders for the witch's badge. Narcissa must have been _vicious_ when Slughorn told her_._ Good for her. Ev hoped he had scars. "It's not up to me who Malfoy invites over to visit." He paused, and added carefully, "I shouldn't be surprised if his family and Selwyn's have business. They're one of the Really Old families, aren't they?"

"Indeed they are,"Slughorn agreed, smiling affably down with keen eyes. "And I'm sure you'll have a lovely time."

"I'd have a lovelier time with Goldstein," Severus said, still carefully (Ev's imagination went into instant drooling overdrive), "but yes, I expect so. Selwyn isn't as bright and she can be a bit brutal, but she's solid, sound, and secure in herself."

"True, m'boy, very true," Slughorn replied, and left them to it.

"You'd better hope Reggie doesn't find out about that," Evan noted once the door was closed.

"Goldstein doesn't need a badge to be his ally," Severus answered what he'd meant. "He'll get eaten alive if he doesn't have someone stronger than her backing him up, too. Selwyn hasn't had a reason to, before."

Evan looked at him for a minute: his sharp, pragmatic face, the clumsy transparency of his maneuvering, his effortless perception. Not five minutes ago he'd seemed quite likely to scream himself purple at a teacher, the only one obliged at all to be in their corner. Nothing had actually gotten better for him since then. There were months of flat, empty loveliness and purely aesthetic interest and _parents_ stretching ahead. It was impossible to get a private compartment on the train.

He told Avery and Mulciber, "You two might want to go downstairs now."

* * *

**Chapter Art:** (link to AO3 chapter in profile as ever)  
_Better to have Potter pissing out. (Proto-Professor Snape does not approve.)_

* * *

**Next:** In Malfoy Manor, Severus gets his food by owl: dinner is for politics. Evan just wants Skype.

**Notes: **I mentioned in the first chapter of Key that Mulciber's name was dreadful... Actually, it's only a girl's name in modern times, so Mulciber may hate it for reasons completely unrelated to it sounding girly to muggles. Maybe he doesn't care for alliteration. Or he gets seasick.

Anyway, this is certainly not the only way it could have gone down. We don't know you have to have been a prefect to have been Head Boy, or that Remus didn't get a second chance. It's possible that both Remus and James could have manned up to some extent, and Remus could have been a seventh-prefect under James's Headship.

On the other hand, this is the best that we're sure the teachers knew about the behavior of Gryffindor '78, male dorm, Spring '76: Peter got involved in the least amount of Really Bad Trouble, and James was actively against the idea of Remus eating people.

And we also know that James found a reason to stop casually hexing (only) people who weren't Severus after this term-and if it wasn't significantly before the end of his sixth year than Dumbledore and McGonagall would both have to be utterly weak or evil, end of story (really end of story. That's about as interesting, at least to me, as 'Snape is a deeply horrible person'), to have given him the Head Boy job. Headology suggests that trying to get Lily to like him or frantic attempts to keep Sirius off the road to Azkaban might explain that, but his behavior under the beech tree suggests otherwise. So... maybe he was given some other way to show he was boss.

Dominance (measured in harem size) is _way_ more important to some kinds of stags than it is to canines, at least during rutting season. They get _really intense_ about it, and may rank chasing competitors off over not-starving (although it's bros over, uh, hinds at other times of year. Of course, for boys, rutting season is measured in both minutes and years, but not weeks). So if we want to go the_ personality gets tangled up with animagery _route (we may not), actual authority that all his peers had to acknowledge just might have calmed him down.

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* Who cannot master himself is no master of others, and only a fool fights in a burning school (even the wind does not respect a fool, who is soon parted from his head). No! Revenge is best served cold.


End file.
